The Captain Swan Valentine's Day Fic Collection
by SilverRavenStar
Summary: A collection of Captain Swan one-shots, written as Valentine's Day presents for my lovely shipmates on tumblr. I am only now getting around to posting them here because I am lazy. Fluff, angst, romance, AU and more!
1. Never Let Me Go

**1: Never Let Me Go, **written for **prankstersunited. **Rated **M.**

**Prompt: **_Future fluffy story of Emma and Killian's first Valentine's Day together? :D_

The computer let out an affronted ping for the tenth time in half as many minutes, and Emma mashed the keys, swearing under her breath for what was definitely more than the tenth time in said minutes. She backspaced, tried again, and filled in the boxes properly (the snafu was a mistyped Social Security number, leaving her to wonder how cursed fairytale characters got Social Security in the first place) then clicked the form to submit. She'd been up all night finishing these claims, and her sleeplessness was surely contributing to her technological incompetence, but she didn't trust anyone else to do them. The insurance agent who was supposed to be on the job had too much of a Pied Piper vibe for her liking, even if he insisted that he only played the flute in his off time, and there was a stack of them to get through after Anton the giant, the final showdown with Cora, and Gold going psychotic had left half of Storybrooke in a jumbled, splintered mess. Now people wanted, understandably, to be recompensed for their lost property, and the prospect of getting a state inspector in here, potentially dealing with the feds, disaster relief coordination, making absolutely sure that no one did anything like get turned into a toadstool or grow wings while FEMA was poking around…

Emma let out a moan at the very thought, realizing that the problem of coordinating this was going to fall on her shoulders, and probably David's as well. But no matter how conscientiously her father would assist, _he_ wasn't the one cohabiting with a pirate fond of guyliner and black leather, who had refused to give up either, and was often to be seen swaggering around town in said ensemble. After Hook had turned against Cora in the final battle, had been crucial in telling the Charmings how to defeat her, had given up a perfect chance to destroy Gold… well, it hadn't made everyone forget, but they were aware that without him, the devastation would have been twice, three times as bad. And since part of that devastation had included the _Jolly Roger, _which was in drydock for extensive repairs, Hook obviously needed a place to crash for a week or so. And while the citizens of Storybrooke thanked him for their lives, they weren't about to give a pirate keys to the front door.

Thus, it had fallen on Emma to do the civic duty of taking him in. The apartment was hers now, as David and Mary Margaret had finally bought a new home, and she had promptly shipped Henry off to them. Regina was still in custody as the new DA – a pretty young woman named Jack, who hid the soul of a ruthless mercenary behind sparkling blue eyes – investigated what charges to press for her involvement with Cora's reign of havoc. And besides, Henry loved his grandparents and David was teaching him to swordfight. They'd be fine. More than fine.

Emma's congratulating herself on this brilliant plan had lasted maybe an hour. If that. Once she got Hook into her apartment, up into the loft, and exasperatedly answered his hundreds of questions about everything from electrical outlets to potato peelers, she also realized that she really should have kept Henry as a buffer zone. Her son was already far too fond of the pirate (she supposed he had a reason, seeing as Hook had also rescued him from Cora) and Hook, who also had a reason for his hang-up about parting sons from their mothers, would have acted like a perfect gentleman if Henry was present. Instead, with any theoretical constraints on his behavior removed, he had blizzarded her with a never-ending procession of sass, flirt, charm, suavity, and pick-up lines that wouldn't have sounded out of place in a porno. (She had purposefully not taught him about the Internet for this very reason.)

And, well…

The first time had happened that very night. Emma should have held out longer, but she was emotionally vulnerable and not thinking straight (or so she told herself) and she hadn't been disposed to resist when Hook padded down the loft stairs and invited himself onto her bed. Despite the impertinence of this action, he didn't move to touch her, just lay next to her as if to let her know he was there. She would have known he was there if she was blind and deaf. She could feel him, could smell his scent, salt and male sweat and leather. And finally, she was the one to roll over and reach for him. He had always done that. Let her know in no uncertain terms how much he wanted her, but leave it up to her to make the final choice.

Their coupling that night had been magnetic and shattering. She told herself it was a one-time thing. Then it happened again the next night, and the next.

The _Roger _was almost seaworthy again, but Emma hadn't mentioned it to him. She felt cowardly for doing it. But he was a pirate, that ship was his life, and Greg Mendel, the bean geneticist, had also stayed in Storybrooke and was doing some very interesting things after consulting Anton the giant. There might soon be a new portal again, and anyone seeing the pirate here, so baldly out of place in the fairytale clothing he refused to relinquish, with that hook and sword and spyglass, could tell that he was just waiting to go home. All those little questions that she acted so annoyed about, about newspaper crosswords, about why on earth anyone would purchase that rubbish from a SkyMall catalogue… what if he took that to mean she didn't want him to…

At that Emma, to her mortification, realized that she couldn't see the computer screen through a haze of hot, stinging salt. _God, I need a break. _She pushed her chair back and tried to dab at her eyes without smearing her makeup, then glanced up at the clock. It was 9 AM. She'd been working since five.

It was a gray, dreary day, a few flakes of snow trying to drift out of the sky and all of Storybrooke suffused with a hard New England February chill. Emma stared blearily at it, tying to work up the ambition to grab her coat and head down the street to Granny's for some coffee and donuts. But people would want to know how things were going, when they were going to arrange that inspector… complain about paperwork delays and everything and…

Emma moaned again, feeling very sorry for herself indeed, and toppled facefirst into a teetering stack of said paperwork, reaching out automatically to stop it from sliding off the desk. Just as she did, however, she heard the front door of the sheriff's office open.

She bolted upright, doing her best to look professional, wondering who it was this time. The old woman who lived in a shoe, who around here was known as Cathy, was making a stink (literally?) about her kids and how they were entitled to individual damage claims and how the city better not condemn her home for foot odor when they came by on the inspections (if they ever did, as Cathy clearly doubted it). She was just one of the people making Emma's life a hassle. _If it's Cathy, I'm hiding under the desk._

But, thank heavens, it wasn't. Instead, it was her mother, carrying a bag emitting such heavenly aromas that Emma almost cried again. "Oh my God, you read my mind," she said, spinning the chair around. "What are you doing here?"

"Sweetie, you're working yourself like a slave." Mary Margaret set down the bag, opened it, and pulled out a fat, sumptuous cinnamon roll that made Emma's eyes cross in lust just to witness. "Besides, I'm sure you have…" She hesitated. "Plans?"

Emma stared at her blankly. "Yeah, uh, finishing up these so Cathy doesn't – "

"No. Not her. I… Emma, I know I'm not your roommate anymore, but I _am _your mother and I know what's going on there now, and I just – "

"What?" Emma almost choked on her bite of the cinnamon roll. "Are you asking me if I am… if Hook and I are…" The answer in any case would be yes, which was probably not something she should admit to. "What does that even…"

She trailed off, regarding her mother suspiciously. Mary Margaret's cheeks were pink, she was wearing a red scarf, and something that looked like a new necklace. "What's the occasion?"

"Occasion?" Mary Margaret looked surprised. "Emma… it's Valentine's Day."

_Oh, shit. _It was. Singles' Awareness Day, as she'd always called it sardonically in the past. Even if she was casually one-off seeing somebody, she'd made it a point never to be together on the big V-Day, in case they got the wrong impression. Seeing happy couples all around her in the restaurant, at least half of those getting proposed to with the ring atop their chocolate mousse, would have made it even worse. Even with Neal – Baelfire, she supposed she had to call him now, a thought that still made her stomach twist with rage – their idea of romance was stealing a bag of Hershey's kisses and sneaking into a movie theater after the usher had stopped checking tickets. She had never once done the traditional corporate sappiness thing. Somehow she didn't think Hook had either. Hell, he didn't even know about the holiday.

"So?" Emma said, trying to disguise the fact that she had absolutely no idea how to answer this. It was alarming enough that she'd automatically thought about Hook when her mother had mentioned it. Well, they _were _living together, and yes, sleeping together, and Mary Margaret was almost certainly aware of this and was going to have a small chat with the pirate about treating her daughter right, which would at least go better for Hook than if it was David doing the chatting, as David's chats with Hook tended to involve fists…

"Well, I just thought… isn't it a day to be with the people you love?"

"I… guess," Emma said slowly. If you got rid of all the commercialism and whatnot, she supposed that was the essence of it. And she'd never had a family to think about before. "Isn't – Dad – taking you out to dinner or something?"

"Yes," Mary Margaret said patiently, "but not until tonight. You don't need to do those now, Emma. Come on."

Emma regarded her mother with a jaded expression, waggling the cinnamon roll. "That's why you brought this, didn't you? Bribery."

"That might have had something to do with it," Mary Margaret admitted, with her pixyish grin. "I promise the town isn't going to come any further apart in your absence."

"Not so sure about that," Emma muttered. While Gold's fit of psychosis had been temporary, it had nonetheless been hell on earth. Belle didn't quite have her memories back either, but she'd at least gotten used to Gold's presence and willing to tolerate his visits to her rehab facility. He and Hook had simmered down into a mutinous mutual truce, mostly due to Neal/Bae, which if nothing else Emma could thank him for. But Neal had gone back to New York, and Gold, seeing everyone else happily with their loved ones today, could all too easily get ideas.

That thought, in fact, made Emma abruptly push back from the desk. "You know what," she said, "you're right. I can give this a try. Let's go."

Mary Margaret eyed her curiously, as if wondering what had been responsible for this sudden change of heart, but didn't question her good fortune. Instead, she grinned again and made a gesture toward the door. "After you."

Emma spent the rest of the morning with her parents. David took them to Storybrooke Coffee & Tea Emporium for drinks and snacks, and some of her weariness began to ebb away as she sat in the warm, kitschy space with her hands wrapped around a mocha, slurping the whipped cream off and determinedly not talking about everything she still had to do. Mary Margaret had taken a leave of absence from her job in order to help her husband and daughter with the sheriff's workload, and also so she could reassess if it was what _she_ wanted; mild-mannered, elementary-school teacher Mary Margaret Blanchard was not the same as the fierce warrior princess Snow. Whenever she wasn't psyching out about it, Emma found it both morbid and fascinating to watch her parents navigating their two identities, their cursed memories and their real memories competing for space in their heads. At times like those, she was devoutly grateful that she'd escaped the curse after all. _One _memory was more than enough for her.

They took a walk afterwards, managed to avoid running into Gold (he seemed to find an excuse to do so every time Emma stepped out into public, another reason she tried not to) and had lunch back at the new house. Then Emma and her mother curled up on the couch to watch a movie together, like they had when they were roommates, although Emma spent most of it dozing on Mary Margaret's lap. When it was done, they headed out with David to pick Henry up from school. She'd insisted that he get back in as soon as possible, wanting to minimize the disruptions and revelations that had recently rocked his life. Finding out that Rumplestiltskin was your grandfather was enough to weird out any eleven-year-old, even one as bombproof as Henry. Then again, she figured the whole Evil Queen/adoptive mother thing had primed him early.

Henry himself, however, was as ebullient as ever, rushing over to show them the valentines he had made in arts and crafts period. Emma felt her heart melting as she looked at his elaborate construction-paper invention, and the picture he had drawn of her on the front: "To Mom, Love Henry Hugs & Kisses." Then she opened it, and choked on a shocked laugh.

"Kid," she said. "Is this…"

"Yeah." Henry beamed. "Do you like it?"

Emma didn't know what to say. Henry had been furious with her for finding out that she'd lied to him about Neal, and while they'd made up in the heat of the crisis, she hadn't thought even until now that he'd entirely forgiven her. But it wasn't Neal that he'd drawn on the inside of her card. Instead, it was unmistakably the one and only Captain Hook, complete with swishy black leather duster. And sword. And spyglass. And, of course, hook.

"This…" Emma said faintly. "You've got… some real art skills, kid."

Henry looked pleased. "Are you gonna show it to Killian?"

Emma clutched the card to her chest, aware of her parents' twin avid stares boring into her back. She didn't know whether to be horrified or very horrified that her son was apparently on chummy first-name terms with the guy she was not-really-sort-of-okay-_was_ with. This implied a whole lot of hanging out that she was unaware of. But she _had _been cocooned in the office, of course, and totally not paying attention to the real world, and apparently had missed a lot of…

"Come clean, kid," she said, leveling a narrow stare at him. "What have you guys been doing?"

Henry had the decency to look abashed. "Nothing! I mean, well, he's showed me the ship and everything, and told me stories about Neverland and okay, so maybe I practice some swordfighting with him when Gramps is busy, and he told me never to get involved with a mermaid or a pixie, but that's kind of silly because obviously there aren't any, here I mean, and I don't even want to go with girls like _that, _and – "

"Give it a few years, sport," David advised his grandson wryly. "You'll change your mind."

"Whatever." Henry appeared untroubled. "So, are you going to show him?"

Emma pressed two fingers to her temples, unsure whether to laugh or dig herself a six-foot hole on the spot. "Uh… maybe. It's… it's very… sweet of you and everything, but…" She'd never faced the pitfalls of dating as a single mother, wondering when was the right time to introduce the guy to the kid and all that. On one level, it was a good thing that Henry and Hook had apparently taken care of it for her, but…

"At least he's been _around," _Henry added accusingly. "I don't even see _you."_

Emma winced. "Look, you know how busy I've been. I haven't had time to – "

"Yes, you have," Henry informed her. "You're just scared. You're scared that when his ship's fixed and Greg works out the bean, he's going to go home and leave you. So you're shutting yourself off in hopes that it's not going to hurt when he does."

Emma stared at her son with jaw dropped. Jesus, what had she done to deserve such damned precocious offspring?A few strangled noises emerged from her lips, bearing no resemblance to actual words.

Mary Margaret hastily cleared her throat. "You know, Emma," she said. "We'll take Henry back to our place. Why don't you head home?"

"Home?" David began. "But isn't that where – " Then he cut off abruptly, with a sound that suggested his wife had just stepped hard on his foot. He was, of course, quite aware that his only begotten daughter was living in sin with Captain Hook (although Emma had been very careful to limit his knowledge of the extent of said sin) but he still wasn't happy about it. But at another look from Mary Margaret, he coughed and said, "Actually, yeah. How about you go home?"

Emma eyed them narrowly, sure that they were setting her up as much as they had been when Mary Margaret came to retrieve her from the sheriff station, but at Henry's Cheshire Cat grin, she threw up her hands. "All right, you bunch of swindlers," she sighed. "I'm going."

—-

The place was dark as Emma opened the front door and started upstairs to the second-floor apartment, leaving her to conclude that her family's attempt to play matchmaker had definitely backfired. Hook was probably out terrifying little old ladies again (although some of the little old ladies definitely hadn't minded the terrifying – come on, the guy was sex on legs, liked to play the perfect gentleman, _and_ had that accent) and thus had left her to marinate in frustration by herself. Why did Henry have to be so devastatingly accurate? Of course she was terrified that Hook was going to collect his ship and set sail for some far horizon, and while he might ask her to come with him, she wasn't going to uproot her entire life and take off like a dumbass eighteen-year-old again. She'd done the vagabond thing over and over. And once or twice she'd fantasized that it wouldn't matter if they took Henry along, but what kind of life was that for a kid? He needed an education and a good start in the world, not learning how to… how to…

Emma reached the apartment, took out her keys again in expectation of having to unlock the door, and was surprised when it was open. She stumbled through into the dark apartment, thinking that if someone (say, Gold) had been prodding around here and had –

It, however, wasn't actually dark. It was late afternoon, of course, but while the lights were off, various little candles had been set all around, beaming with a bright twinkling glow. Paper lanterns were strung up overhead, and a red tulle curtain had been draped over the bedroom alcove, giving it the look of some exotic, mysterious pleasure den. In fact, both the quality and amount of the decoration (none of which, needless to say, had been present when she left for work) made her realize at once that there had been a conspiracy going on to keep her out of the apartment. Her son and her mother looked like Culprits #1 and #2.

"What the…" Emma expelled an amazed, disbelieving laugh. "Killian?" The name tasted strange on her lips, given that the only time she spoke it was to moan it while certain… other… things were happening. It was too intimate for everyday use, like walking around dressed in lingerie. The rest of the time, she called him Hook.

There was a pause. Then he emerged from the drapes with a rustle, clad in his full and magnificent pirate ensemble, with a red vest she had never seen him wear before and which immediately did horrible things to her faculties of reason and restraint. Not to mention the eyeliner. It was probably bad how much she really didn't mind the eyeliner. Really, really didn't mind it. And the way he was looking at her just now and the fact that she…

"Hello," she said faintly. Wherever her blood was, it wasn't in her head.

"Hello, love." He grinned. "Was wondering how long I was going to have to sit with my thumb up my arse, waiting for you."

"Sorry," she said, having no clue what she was apologizing for. She waved at the romantic paradise around them. "I thought you didn't even know what Valentine's Day was – !"

"Insider source." Hook smirked. "Very helpful."

"Henry," Emma said immediately. "How long have you two cretins been planning this?"

"Also proprietary information. And beside the point." He reached out and looped her wrist in his hook, whirling her around and pulling her solidly against him. He wrapped both arms around her waist and kissed the back of her neck. "Well, love? Aren't you going to say something?"

"I just tried to say something, and you shut me down," Emma pointed out. Rather lamely, she knew. But she didn't trust herself to say anything else. She wanted to believe in this more than anything _ever,_ and that kind of wanting hurt her at the depths of her soul. "Hook," she murmured. "I… don't get me wrong, it's beautiful, I love that you did it, but… why?"

"Why?" He sounded puzzled. "A man needs an occasion to surprise the woman he loves? Especially on a bloody _holiday _dedicated to the whole idea? I'm fond of it, rather."

Emma bit her lip. "But you… aren't you going to…"

She couldn't get the rest of the sentence out, suddenly feeling like there was a golf ball in her throat. But Hook picked up on it, and he turned her around to face him, eyes suddenly very serious as he pressed his forehead against hers, cupping her cheek in his good hand.

"Love," he said, half-teasing, half-tender. "My stubborn suspicious lass. I'm not leaving you. I haven't even entertained the notion in my foggiest of moments, and with all the nonsense that's been flying about, I can testify that there have been many. I'm _alive, _after three centuries of trying not to be. And for some godsforsaken reason that I shall freely admit is beyond my comprehension, I've somehow got you to put up with me. _You. _To put up with _me. _Now, I'm not the wisest of men, but I'm also far from the thickest. I think _that's _a bloody miracle."

Emma's eyelashes fluttered. "But your ship…"

"I can't wait until it's finished." Hook bent down and began to kiss her collarbone. "Then we can…" in between kisses, his lips burning her throat like a brand – "take lovely sails around… and you can… show me a bit more of… your world. Only ever seen… this part of it. Bit… rinky-dink… really. And I could… do without… Gold."

"But…" Emma's fingers slid through his dark hair, compelled by the urge to keep him there. Her knees were rapidly giving out; her entire body stopped functioning properly when they were together like this. "Doesn't that mean…"

"Mean _what?" _He was obviously aggravated by her refusal to get on with his attempt (well, not really an attempt, he could teach a graduate-level course) to seduce her. He lifted his head and stared her down. "Mean I want to go? Bloody hell, love, you hear a word I just told you? I've lived on a ship enough years of my life. If I wanted to go back there, if I wanted to live and be anywhere else than where I am right now… trust me, you'd know it."

Emma smiled tremulously at him, and he caught her hand as she reached for him, bringing it to his mouth and kissing each knuckle. Then he began to trail kisses in the hollow of her wrist, her tired hand, her cramped fingers, loosening them with heat and slow strokes and the insistent pressure of his lips. He turned her palm over and kissed it as well, the hand he'd once bandaged atop a beanstalk with rum for disinfectant and scarf for a bandage, pulled the knot tight with his teeth. The sensation in her stomach then was exactly the one now, even though probably nothing less than torture could have gotten her to admit to it.

She sighed then, small, softly, and reached out for him with both arms. That, as always, was the signal he'd been waiting for, waiting for her to tell him that it was about bloody time, and he lifted her and swung her back against the wall, bracing her in such a way that she had to wrap her legs around his waist. She cradled his face in both hands, his impossibly good-looking face, his dark stubble rasping against her fingers as the two of them put on a textbook display of kissing the ever-living bejeezus out of each other. He wedged himself between her legs, using his hook to help support her weight, tangling his hand in her hair and grinding against her. She moaned, mouth open, gasping for air and only finding him.

"Say we continue the conversation in the bedroom, love?" Hook whispered, peeling her off the wall and helpfully supporting her through the red curtain; her legs were totally useless by now. But she still managed to reach up and seize hold of him, pulling him down on top of her; he laughed as they rolled onto the disordered quilts. "Oy. Mind the vest."

"The hell with the vest," Emma muttered savagely; her present concern was getting it off as fast as possible. "Buy you another one."

"But this is… a special one. Not worn it in…" Hook hesitated, then kissed her again. "A long time," he whispered into her mouth. "Let's just say that."

"All right, but considering the amount of _my _clothes you've torn off…" That was his favorite trick whenever he couldn't be bothered with the modern invention called bra fastenings. At the rate Emma had to replace her underthings, it was a miracle the whole _town _hadn't caught onto them. She fumbled around and got hold of the buttons, undid them with shaking fingers, and shucked the entire kit and caboodle off of him. Vest, jacket, shirt, the whole nine – a favor which he promptly reciprocated. He even did her bra the normal way, with a deft flick of his fingers, which made her instantly suspect that he'd been lying when he protested he couldn't do it with one hand, as most men clearly found them bewildering enough with two.

_Bastard. _But he was _her _bastard, her pirate captain, _hers, _and Emma couldn't summon up the remotest damn to give. She wriggled around to a better position underneath him, getting a knee up and bracing her heel on the bed, noting in dizzy amusement that he hadn't worn his usual tight leather trousers; he was wearing looser-fitting breeches instead, apparently in expectation of removing them in hasty circumstances. She happily obliged him, while he was ransacking her own jeans in return, swearing only once when the button refused to slip out of the eye. Then she was down to just her panties, and those quickly went the way of the dodo.

Emma gave a muffled squeak as Hook pressed his thumb between her legs, rasping on the sensitive spot until her eyes crossed. It was practically criminal to be so close, stark naked, and to not have him inside her, to not throw any and all sense of propriety out the window and climb him like a tree. (Why shouldn't she? He was _hers.) _Then his mouth dipped down to kiss what his fingers had just been exploring, and her entire body clenched like a fist, scraping the sheets.

Hook lifted his head to give her an extremely self-satisfied smirk, then bent back to business. Her legs twisted and her hand clawed at his hair, hard enough that she was probably hurting him, but if so, he didn't appear to care. Then he pulled back and began kissing his way up her stomach, over her ribs, between her breasts, and finally nipped at her throat, leaning up to catch her bottom lip between his teeth. As he was carefully, lusciously exploring her mouth, he slowly nudged her apart, creating just a barest whisper of contact, enough to cause her to go haywire on the spot. She groaned, arching her back, pulling at him as greedily as a miser, as he shifted his weight over her, positioned himself at her entrance, and pressed inside just a maddening inch.

Emma was wearying of the pace of things, and she had two hands to make her opinion known. She linked one arm around his back, grasped his shoulder, dug in her heels, and worked up enough momentum to flip him over, flat on his back like an overturned turtle. The look on his face was extremely enjoyable, but she had other priorities. She grasped his hips and guided him the rest of the way into her, her knees driving into the bed on either side of him.

Hook – Killian – chucked throatily, managing to look debonair even with eyes crossed. "Good – form, lass," he grunted, adjusting the angle to get better penetration. "Very – good."

Emma grinned triumphantly, and they scooted backwards on the bed until Killian was almost sitting up, holding her on his lap as they rolled their hips together, Emma's arms wrapped in abandon around his neck, mouth open as she kissed the point of his ear and the hollow of his throat, his shoulder, everything she could touch and taste and see. His own mouth was thoroughly working over her breasts and shoulder and jaw, and she shuddered, tightening around him, slick and hot and hard, lips finding each other again and kissing until neither of them could breathe, until he drove into that spot deep inside her and she saw nothing but the stars.

They remained entangled for who knew who long after that, gasping. Finally, Emma extricated herself and sat up. "So," she said, still breathless, but grinning. "Happy Valentine's Day?"

Hook groaned. "Thank the gods it only happens once a year," he said indistinctly. "Not sure I could survive another one of those."

Emma raised an eyebrow. "Yes, you poor little innocent virginal choirboy, I'm sure you couldn't. Well, then, you're just no fun at all, aren't you? It's not like I – "

She cut off in a squeal as he rose up like a tornado, got both arms around her waist, and slammed her back down on the quilts, kissing her as if he, too, lived in fear that she might one day disappear. Kissed her to within an inch of her life or his, mouths bruising and wet and swollen, tasting of each other, of salt and sex and sweetness, until at last he pulled back with a positively feral smile, eyes as dark as black sapphires. "Maybe I couldn't, lass," he breathed. "But that doesn't mean I don't want to try."


	2. It's Not About The Jello

**It's Not About The Jello **for **ladymagdalene. **Rated: **T.**

**Prompt: **_Emma tries to explain Valentine's Day to Killian as the hospital starts to get decorated :P_

"Sheriff?" The attending nurse was bearing down on her, balancing a tottering stack of medical paperwork that, given half a chance, she was certainly about to avalanche on Emma. "I was hoping you'd come by. I need to ask about our legal options – under what circumstances, exactly, can we justify withholding contact from Mr. Mendel? Is there a statute of limitations before it becomes kidnapping? Now that he's on the mend, he's insisting on being allowed to reach his family, and – "

"Yeah, look. I'm sorry, but I am really _not _the right person to ask about this. Try Gold, he likes to dress up as a lawyer on occasion." Emma did not want to think about Gold – did the man even have a first name in this world? – or anything to do with him, especially after what had just happened. She probably shouldn't even have come here; he wasn't joking when he'd threatened to kill all of them. It had taken a bald-faced lie about needing to buy a few things for their trip to allow her to slip off to the hospital, and she knew he would be timing her with the atomic clock if she wasn't back in an hour, packed and ready to leave. It was foolish to even risk this, but… she had to. Maybe if they dumped the paperwork on Gold, it would distract him from coming to hunt for her. Either way, however, she still didn't have long.

As the nurse opened her mouth to ask again, Emma shook her head and held up a hand, then sidled off down the corridor. The hospital, she noticed, was looking unexpectedly festive; one of the school classes must have come in and perked it up, with paper heart chains, red… _things _confected out of construction paper, and handwritten cards with stick-figure self-portraits. Since time had been frozen, she wondered suddenly if they'd been third-graders or fourth-graders for twenty-eight years, and felt a pang of pity for those unfortunates who'd been doomed to middle school that long. Henry obviously hadn't been affected, as he'd aged like a normal kid, but there must have been something about the curse to make everyone else fail to notice that they were acting out _Groundhog Day _for real. Who knew how the hell dark magic worked. If you did, it was probably too late for everyone else.

Emma was presently thinking about the curse due to the fact that even that was safer to dwell on than the reason she was risking her neck to get to the hospital. She nervously touched the envelope tucked under her arm. She had written down everything Hook needed to know. Well, some of it. She hadn't told him about the fact that Gold had threatened his life and she was leaving to protect him, just that she had to go. And she hadn't mentioned why. And she definitely hadn't mentioned the kill-everybody part. In fact, all it came down to was that she was going to be gone for a little while, and that if he did anything further to Belle, he was going to pay.

Emma turned the corner, down to the mostly empty wing where Hook's room was located. Of course, this commando mission hadn't been entirely necessary in the first place. Not really at all. She could have just mailed the card, or told her parents to fill him in, or any of it. But she wanted to see him. Needed to see him.

She dawdled outside his room, wondering if she could open it a crack and see if he was sleeping. If he caught her, she'd never get away with just about any element of her cover story, and that was going to be a situation. If she could only be certain that he –

At that moment, horrifyingly, the door clicked. She leapt back like a scalded cat, almost dropping the envelope, far more flustered than she had any need or call to be, as it opened, there was a muffled obscenity from within, and the feared Captain Hook, in a fluffy white bedgown, hobbled out like an old lady escaping from the nursing home, trailing a clattering IV stand.

He got about a foot over the threshold before spotting her and stopping dead. They stared at each other; it was hard to tell which of them was more shocked. Then he cracked a sarcastic grin and attempted to pull off a courtly bow, but stopped again with a muffled grunt of pain. "Well, well. Milady. Whatever brings you to my humble abode?"

"Can it, Hook. I – I really don't have time for this." That hadn't come out sounding quite as businesslike as she meant; her voice faltered a little, sounded almost fragile. "Look, I'm going to make it quick. I just – _wait a damn second!_ What are you doing up? You're _supposed_ to be chained to your bed! Who the hell unchained you?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" His grin turned devilish. "It was a nurse. Fetching young lady. Couldn't stand to see me suffering, once she knew how much I was. My pain seemed to become quite a personal matter for her. Why? Are you jealous?"

"Don't be ridiculous." Emma tried to stop her stomach from diving into her foot, which was what it had just attempted to do. Of all the stupid things, she _was _jealous. Thinking of him being pathetic and earnest and wooing some impressionable woman with those puppy-dog eyes and tales of woe… and as much as she didn't want to admit it, it hurt her to think of him suffering. She had no doubt that he was genuinely in pain, although if there was a level of pain for him to be in where he wasn't thinking about flirting with her and firing off innuendos, she had yet to encounter it. Didn't think she really wanted to, either.

"Well, then." He cocked a dark eyebrow. "What's that look on your face?"

"What look on my face?" Oh God, what look on her face?

It appeared very much as if he was about to follow this up with further commentary, but she didn't let him. "Okay, I'm going to make this quick. I'm – leaving town for a little while. You're not going to be harmed… as long as you behave yourself. Just… _please _don't do _anything _to Belle, or there are going to be very serious – "

"Why would I?" He shrugged. "I've done what I wanted with her. It's Rumplestiltskin who's my quarrel now."

"Actually… he's… going to be gone as well." Emma bit her lip. "So, actually – the whole revenge thing? Needs to go on ice for a while. Just thought I'd – "

She was cut off as he grabbed her shoulder with his good hand, letting go of the IV stand and almost putting his weight on her. "Lass, what? What? Tell me you're not going with him."

"Actually… I am." Emma wanted to move back from him, but she couldn't figure a way to do that without causing him to lose his balance and fall, and instead she found herself putting a steadying hand on his waist, trying not to exert pressure on his ribs. "Trust me when I say that I really have no choice."

"But you can't go." His eyes had turned confused, pained. Even thinking that he had probably done the exact same thing to the nurse wasn't enough to immunize her to their effect. "The rest of this pisspot of a town wants my head."

"Yeah, buddy. Maybe you should have thought of that _before _you went after Belle with a gun."

She'd been trying to make him let go, to reestablish some distance between them, to hurt him, but he just shrugged, as if it was a fact of life. She didn't understand this man, had realized that he had walls even higher than hers, but for some reason, kept letting them down around her and inviting her in to inspect the dark, crumbled ruins. And indeed he said, "What else did you expect I'd do? I certainly don't regret it."

Emma pushed half-heartedly at his hand. "You are such a basket case."

"Likely so, love. But please, you can't leave me here in this bloody place." He lowered his voice, glanced from side to side, and whispered, "They tried to kill me last night."

"What?" Emma was jolted. After all the drama had gone down, with Whale and Greg Mendel's surgery and trying to interrogate him about the accident… had someone – had Gold – tried to get in a final parting shot? She couldn't disguise the fear in her voice as she said, "How?"

"Come with me." He took hold of her hand, his scarred fingers closing over hers – it was funny, but hers fit very nicely in his, and she didn't pull away like she should have. Instead, even with the hundred and one reasons why she should be doing anything but following him into his room, she did exactly that, furtherly annoyed to find that her heart was pounding. What was –

"There." Hook pointed at something set on the side table by the bed. It looked like an ordinary tray of food to Emma. _"That."_

Emma stepped closer, bending over it with a frown. Hospital food wasn't gourmet, but poison? Probably not. Just a little saran-wrap package of crackers, a container of red Jello, and something that probably had more preservatives in it than half the medicines. She'd be pissed too if they were feeding her this, but… "I don't get it. What?"

"That!" Hook gestured at the Jello. "Don't think I don't know it's bloody poison. It moves by itself when you touch it!"

Emma made a faint choking noise. She coughed, coughed again, and said in a strained voice, "That's… actually not poison. It's – Jello."

He stared at her blankly. "What the hell is Jello?"

Emma emitted another squeaking noise, then pounded herself on the chest and cleared her throat. By now, she'd been asked to buy a whole crap-ton of crazy, not least the curse and the Evil Queen having adopted her long-lost son and Pinocchio being her childhood protector and now Rumplestiltskin threatening to kill her and her parents who were practically the same age and dragons and falling through a portal and ogres and shape-changing witches and sparkly dust – yeah, she was on all that. But somehow, she had never once foreseen that she would be tasked with explaining hospital Jello to Captain Hook.

"It's food," she said feebly. "At least, I think. Nobody's ever been really sure what it is."

"I'm not eating it." He crossed his arms.

"Nobody's making you," she reassured him. "But I swear, it's not poison. Here, look." She peeled off the wilted saran wrap and spooned out a bite, then popped it in her mouth – having a split second to wonder what she would do if he was right, and it was actually poison. But it was just hospital Jello, which wasn't to say anything outstanding, and she swallowed. "There."

He cocked his head and regarded her with an expression that could almost be described as fond, that smile he'd given her after she'd told him that she'd pick him as Dead Guy of the Year (why had he smiled at her like that?) "You _are_ brilliant, love."

"What? I just ate some Jello. It's not exactly a merit award moment."

"Might be so, but…" His hand had somehow found its way back into hers, linking their fingers. "It's not every woman who up and eats something a man has just told her is poison, especially to prove it's not."

"Well, that's because I knew it wasn't."

"Did you?" He lifted her hand to his lips and planted a light kiss on the back of it. "Doesn't change my assessment."

Emma did her damndest to ignore what that did to her stomach. "Okay, Romeo," she said tolerantly, disentangling herself. "I really need to get on with what I was doing, so…"

"Romeo?" He looked blank again. "My name is Killian, love."

"Yes, I know. It's a…" Actually, no. She was not going to tell him where that reference came from. It was already strange enough talking to him – she still hadn't figured out how it was that everyone in Fairytale Land apparently spoke English, or at least could understand her without a translation spell or any of that. But to talk to someone who sounded like a charming British rakehell, but was totally clueless about, oh, the last three hundred years of technological innovation… yeah, it was weird. Another thing to think about instead of what he was making her feel. (Although there was no getting away from that.)

"It's just a nickname," she came up with at last. "For, um, an annoying guy like you."

"Annoying?" He pressed his stump to his heart. "Truly, m'lady, you have felled me dead."

"You don't need any help with that, trust me." Her lips trembled unexpectedly, betraying more weakness than she wanted, and she tried to turn, to make a run for it before this got any more awkward. But his hand was still holding hers.

"Love," he said softly. "If I absolutely cannot persuade you not to faff off with the crocodile – and I'm deadly serious, don't go with him – I've got one more question."

"Yes?" She tried to meet his eyes squarely, to show she didn't have anything to hide, but one glance was too much. She tried to look down again posthaste, but his stump caught her chin. For a guy with only five functioning fingers, he was awfully fucking handsy.

"Nothing quite so bad as that, love," he said ruefully, leaning close enough that she thought he was going to touch their noses. Their mouths were too near as well, so she felt his words like ghosts against her lips. "What's with the gaudy tat they're stringing up bloody everywhere?"

"The… what?"

"All the ribbons… and hearts." His mouth tightened, and she wondered if he had a particular reason for disliking this particular reminder. _I hurt his heart… Belle's just where he keeps it. He killed my love, I know the feeling. _And suddenly… thinking about Graham convulsing on the floor of the sheriff's station, Henry's insistence that Regina had crushed his heart… but she didn't want to ask if that was how Milah had died, the woman whose name was tattooed on his arm, the only thing he had left. She was afraid that she already knew the answer.

That flash of insight was almost too much. Especially knowing that if she could see into him like glass, he could – already had – done the same to her. "Those are decorations," she mumbled. "For Valentine's Day. It's a terrible holiday where people buy sappy cards and overpriced flowers and act like they haven't been fucking up their love lives for the rest of the year."

"Really?" He looked intrigued. "A holiday all about love? That doesn't sound so terrible to me."

"Yeah, well… perspective, and everything. It's never been my bag."

"Why not?"

"It's… not really the sort of thing I've ever felt like celebrating." Her heart was pulsing like a trip hammer in her throat, her fingers, her breast, and she was pretty sure he could tell. "Because, well…"

"Because you were abandoned," he finished, with that goddamned perspicacity of his. "And never believed in love again after that, so of course you'd take the cynical view. And because you might now be coming to a point in your life when you have to face it again when you feel the least ready for it, so of course you're running scared."

"You think an awful lot of yourself, don't you?" Emma said weakly.

"Did I say anything about me in there?" He gave her that crooked, infuriating smile.

"No, but I'm going to guess you were thinking it."

"If you can guess what I'm thinking, darling, congratulations." He let his nose touch hers, just the briefest whisper. "It's an acquired skill for most, but you… just seem to have it."

"I'm not sure about that anymore," she whispered hoarsely. "I used to have that gift of knowing at least if people were lying… but now, I can't even tell."

He kissed the corner of her mouth, right next to her lips, the barest of pecks. "Try."

"I… really… have to go." Emma pushed at him again. "Please, I don't have a choice. He… threatened you." The instant it came spilling out, she clapped a hand to her lips, but too late.

Hook blinked at her, bemused. "What?"

"He… no, really, please, I have to get out of here. Please. The nurse is going to come by or something, you can flirt with her then."

"What if I'm not at all interested in flirting with her now that she's obligingly uncuffed me, and I'm instead quite interested in learning about this holiday and its – what was the word – Jello?"

"It's not about the Jello. The Jello just… was there. I'll explain more later, if you really have to know. I'm serious, Hook, this is about my family. My son."

She'd hoped he'd understand what she was saying. Now that she'd learned that she was going to look for Rumplestiltskin's son, and that Hook's entanglement had been with Rumplestiltskin's wife, she realized that Milah must have left her child behind to run off with Hook. Emma couldn't judge the woman, not knowing exactly what her marriage to Rumple had been like and what she felt and why she'd decided that her only choice was ditching it all and fleeing – but Emma _did_ know, at the core, what had made Milah do it, because she herself had spent so long fleeing herself. But that was before she had met Henry. Not even for Hook was she going to pack up and fuck off to some remote corner of the world and never come back.

(Wait a second. Not even for Hook? Did that imply he had some kind of special hold on her? Especially when she was about to pack up and fuck off to some possibly remote corner of the world with Gold, _because _of Hook?)

(But that was to keep Henry safe, so it didn't count.)

(Did it? You know, it _would_ have made more sense for Gold to threaten her parents or just about anyone else, although of course he had. But to specifically go for Hook – that was low and dirty, and implied that she wasn't being as cool about this as she thought and)

(Fuck it she was tired of having this argument.)

Emma coughed, horrified that with her apparently glass face around Hook, he had been following this like he was kicking back and watching sports on TV, although he surely didn't know what either of those was. He did look suspiciously entertained, at any rate. "Sure I can't persuade you to enlighten me with the radiance of your presence, just a bit longer?"

"Unfortunately, no. I'm leaving this time… really." Somehow she got her fingers to open, to break contact with his skin, to feel like a spark had shorted out somewhere and left her cold. Thought about handing him the letter, then decided against it; it wouldn't tell him anything he didn't already know, and only reveal how much she had been planning to keep back. Could only look at him, look at him as if she could never have enough, and then step back, step through the door, close it behind her, and go.


	3. Fairytale

**3. Fairytale **for **captainkillianswan.** Rated **M.**

**Prompt: **_I was thinking fluffy? With also some CS x Henry maybe? Thanks so much lovely! 3_

_(also added per request: a baby girl named Alex)_

The alarm clock went off in Emma's ear with a sound like a bomb. She wasn't so much woken as _detonated _into consciousness, from somewhere deep in a murky dream, lifting her head out of the pillows with a sound like a concussed hippopotamus. Blindly, she groped around in the general direction of the side table, but couldn't find it. Instead, she felt motion in the quilts next to her, a large warm body leaning over her, and a crunch, an electronic device squealing in protest then abruptly going silent, and a distinct aroma of scorched metal innards.

"Really, Killian?" Emma moaned. Not that she was terribly surprised. This one had lasted a whopping two months; no matter how often she tried to teach him the mysteries of a snooze button, his first reaction when it went off was to flip a wig and smash it with his hook. She had to admit, if she had lived her entire life without one, that might be her first impulse too (hell, she had lived her entire life _with _one, and it still was). But since she was getting tired of ducking into Dark Star Pharmacy and embarrassedly explaining to Sneezy (or Clark, as he still preferred to call himself) that she needed another one, she wished he would go a little easier on the poor things. It had crossed her mind that this might have something to do with him being Captain Hook and all, what with his canonical antipathy for timepieces, but since as far as she knew, Gold had never swallowed a clock, this might just be part of the stories that they had gotten wrong. (They had never mentioned the fact that Captain Hook was a hot-as-hell, textbook tall-dark-handsome-and-shady guyliner-loving magnificent rogue named Killian Jones, either. Or that she was going to end up marrying him, settling down, and watching him attempt to adjust to Storybrooke suburbia, usually with amusing/facepalming results such as these.)

"Sorry, love," he said from above her, not sounding very sorry. "I hate the sodding things."

"You and the rest of us." Emma yawned mightily, still unable to return to the world of the living. Then again, since she was the mother of a fourteen-year-old high school freshman who ate everything in the house and an energetic two-year-old cherub who had inherited every drop of her father's talent for hell-raising, as well as working full time, as well as humoring Killian's insistence that he teach her how to swordfight just in case… it was actually surprising that she could ever wake up at all. She felt perpetually exhausted, so much that it had crossed her mind to wonder if she was pregnant again; she damn well enjoyed being intimate with her pirate and the two of them weren't always up on the birth control. But the test she'd taken yesterday had come back negative, so it must just be general blah. This gross February weather wasn't helping. It was a good thing it was the shortest month of the year, but it always felt twenty-eight days too long. Who had _invented _February, anyway?

"Mom!" Henry bellowed from down the hall, voice cracking halfway through the word, to the accompaniment of a gale of childish giggles from his little sister. "Alex is in the trunk again!"

Emma groaned. She wasn't surprised that they were up – how was it that both her children were such confounded morning people? Even Killian, on the occasions that he wasn't annihilating unsuspecting electronics, sprang out of bed with a smile on his face and a song in his heart. Whereas she wasn't functional before at least three cups of coffee, and even then, had to stumble via echolocation to the kitchen. "Then get her out of it!"

Henry started to answer, but was interrupted by a crash. _The trunk _in this case was particularly bad, since that was where they kept the swords and spellbooks and other dangerous items; it was supposed to be locked up, but this was the offspring of Killian Jones and Emma Swan you were talking about. If the girl wanted in, she got in.

Emma swore and struggled to exert enough energy to sit up, but Killian threw back the covers and jumped out. "Don't worry, darling. I've got it."

"I love you," Emma mumbled, regretting the loss of his warm presence next to her but pleased that he had taken matters into his own hands. She heard him striding down the hall and, no doubt, putting on his fearsome face. It was theoretically harder to misbehave when your parent was Captain Hook, but while Killian liked to style himself a stern disciplinarian, Alexandra Mary Margaret Jones had her father wrapped, twice, around her chubby little finger. As for Henry, he adored his stepfather, but he had long ago learned the fine art of manipulating him. Send Killian in to chastise Henry for staying up too late and playing too many mind-melting alien video games, and pretty soon they'd be chilling together long into the night. Well, it wasn't every day that you got to grow up in the same household as the Scourge of the Seas, a three-hundred-plus-year-old pirate who had bedtime stories to put every other suburban father to shame (as well as being almost comically inappropriate for a fourteen-year-old).

As for the hook part, it was still in effect, as proved by the demise of the latest alarm clock. She'd halfheartedly tried to persuade Killian to get a nice prosthetic from the hospital, especially as it would have come in handy (har) when dealing with a rambunctious toddler, but while he'd worn it for a while, he'd eventually gotten bored with it and gone back to the hook. It was too much part of him to leave it behind forever, he said. And besides, when he did decide to show his teeth, there was nothing like a hook for inspiring instant fear in the kids. Killian didn't keep it sharp anymore, as there wasn't really call to murder anyone, but they didn't have to know that.

Thinking of this made a sleepy smile cross Emma's lips. She might be exhausted, but she really had gotten unfathomably lucky. And since she did want to get up and see Henry before he ran off to school, awkwardly attempting to court Grace Hatter under the eagle eye of Jefferson, she rolled over and stood up, stretching her arms over her head and hearing an alarming array of cracks. Thirty-two wasn't exactly geriatric age, but she'd been going hard recently.

Something else to think about later. She pulled her bathrobe on over her tank top and pajama pants and padded down the hall. They'd finally moved out of the loft apartment when Alex was born, partly for more space and partly because they were tired of Henry almost catching them every time they were getting down and dirty; since the bedroom and kitchen were connected in the old apartment, the lack of a door had become a serious issue. They were reduced to heading to the _Jolly Roger _every time they wanted a night with no chance of being disturbed, and leaving Henry home alone by himself, even if he insisted it was fine, was still not entirely copasetic with Emma's mama-bear sensibilities. Even if he didn't burn the house down or accidentally discover porn, it still felt cheap to ditch him so she could sneak off and hook up with Hook.

Fortunately, however, that was no longer an issue, and while they had to take care with Alex and her suspicious aptitude at getting into locked things such as doors, their sex life had not at all suffered since becoming, quote unquote, real parents. If anything, it had gotten even hotter; the clandestine sneaking around added a spice of the forbidden to the whole thing. And when Emma had given birth to their daughter, when Killian had been in the delivery room with her and barking at the nurses every time she moaned in pain from a contraction, when he finally held his own child in his arms after three hundred years of loneliness, madness, vengeance, and rage… Killian had always looked at Emma as if she was the rarest and most beautiful thing on earth, the only woman who existed, but after Alex was born, when their little family became four, she could say without a doubt that she knew her husband worshiped the ground she walked on. The best part was, she could say the same for him.

Emma smiled to herself again as she stepped into the kitchen and beheld the scene. Henry was sitting at the breakfast bar, gangly legs dangling off the stool – he had grown six inches in three months, and his clothes were perpetually too small for him – and shoveling industrial quantities of cornflakes down the hatch like he expected them to try to escape. As for Killian, he had Alex in his arms, successfully distracting her from her attempted entre into the trunk, and she was giggling madly, her mop of dark hair tangled in her face. At Emma's entrance, both of them looked up and grinned at her with identical baby-blue eyes and angelically devilish expressions.

"Cut it out, you two," Emma warned them, crossing over to kiss them anyway. She had wondered a few times what it was going to be like when Alex was old enough to date; Killian would be the total archetype of the father who lay in wait on the porch with a shotgun on his lap, interrogating the awkward pimpled suitor to within an inch of his life. She had a feeling he _would _sharpen his hook for that occasion. And otherwise make it as hard for the boy as possible, to see if he'd fight for her. Alex was definitely not going to think he hung the moon by the time that day rolled around, but it was a long way away. _Thankfully. _She wasn't ready for it either.

"You're in a hurry," Emma said instead, turning to her son. "What's the big rush?"

"I, uh." Henry cleared his throat with a squeak. "It's, um, you probably remember, Valentine's Day. And I sort of promised I'd meet Grace and walk her to school."

Emma did her best to hide her amused expression. Henry had recently decided that he was far too cool and worldly to continue taking the bus, a change of heart entirely coincident with his new interest in Grace. _Speaking of terrifying potential fathers-in-law. _Jefferson probably wouldn't actually stab Henry with a pair of scissors, but the "Mad" part of his alter ego was as warranted as the "Hook" part of her dear spouse's. "Oh, yeah, it is, isn't it?" she said, blinking. "Well, er… good luck with that, then."

Killian snorted, causing a luminescent blush to shoot up Henry's ears. He hunched as defensively as a turkey on the lam from hunters. "We're just _friends."_

"No, lad, but that's quite all right. Fair play to you." Shifting his daughter to his other arm, Killian strode to the breakfast bar to administer a manly clap on the back to his stepson, almost causing Henry to inhale a cornflake. "Ladies' man in the making. Chip off the old block."

Emma shot a narrow glare at her husband. "Do _not _give him ideas."

"What ideas?" Killian and Henry said in unison.

"Never mind," Emma said with a sigh, biting her cheek to keep from laughing, then set about making breakfast for herself and Killian. Soon the aroma of eggs, sausages, and French toast filled the kitchen, comfortably fogging up the cold windows, and she smacked Henry's shoulder lightly when he eyed it with all the pathos of a condemned man awaiting his last meal. "You already had yours, buckaroo. Besides, it's 7:15. I seem to recall you had a hot date waiting."

Henry shot a glance at the clock, spluttered, and exploded off the stool like a gunshot, pelting down the hall to the bathroom and slamming the door shut. Various incoherent ejaculations drifted out, causing Killian to cock an eyebrow and look concerned, and Emma met his eyes and put a finger to her lips. He nodded solemnly and attempted to interest Alex in eating her own breakfast without sending it everywhere, a task which was meeting with only moderate success.

A few minutes later, the bathroom door burst open again and Henry sprinted out, hair flattened down with a wet comb to within an inch of its life and breath now minty-fresh. He crammed on his coat, seized his backpack, and yelled, "Bye, Mom! Bye, Killian! I'llbehomesometimethisafternoo nexpectmewhenyouseeme! _Later!"_

The front door slammed behind him, and he was to be observed galumphing away down the sidewalk, long strides eating up the distance, and Emma felt a sweetly painful pang at seeing how grown-up he was now (though for sure, not as much as he liked to think). Regina was still in his life, of course, and his grandparents; Henry spent almost every weekend at David and Mary Margaret's place, and could handle a sword and a horse as well as any fairytale prince. There were times when Emma wondered if they were, in fact, going to go back to the Enchanted Forest someday, and she didn't know how that made her feel. Henry's life was entirely here, he wasn't going to take well to any attempt to deprive him of his aliens and video games, and she herself was a thoroughly modern girl with attachments to conveniences like hair dryers, cell phones, and birth control pills. She and Killian were definitely not opposed to having more children, as evidenced by the fact that she sometimes forgot to take them, but she preferred to keep her own agency in the matter. Emma's life had always been about choice, in the moments either where she made them or was not allowed to, the moment where she'd chosen Killian.

"What's the matter, love?" He nudged her shoulder. "You have that look."

"Nothing, really." Emma smiled at him and tossed down the dregs of her mug. One of the good things (among many) about being married to this man meant that at least she got her day started with a kick. The first time she'd taken him to Storybrooke Coffee & Tea, Killian had been loudly scornful of the prissy percolators and latte art and four-dollar caramel macchiatos; coffee in his world was a coarse black substance similar to tar or straight whiskey in its intensity. Therefore, whenever they had guests over, Emma had to make the after-dinner beverages.

Emma finished her breakfast and leaned over to kiss him one more time. "Don't get into trouble," she reminded him, as he blinked at her innocently. Killian wasn't really a house-husband, but as Emma had a full time job as the sheriff, he was nonetheless the one usually in charge of Alex. No wonder she'd already acquired so many bad habits.

Emma grabbed the keys and headed out to the car, then drove into town and passed a mostly uneventful day at work. Storybrooke had been almost peaceful since they'd defeated Cora, although of course never entirely quiescent; these _were _people used to settling disputes by fighting it out, after all. And she definitely wasn't Gold's favorite person, what with her being married to Hook and everything, so she was sure that there were plenty of things she never got to hear about. But once Killian had become part of the Charming family, and the father of David and Mary Margaret's granddaughter, he was in. Watching David and Killian tag-team an opponent together, swords out and/or guns blazing, was pretty much a thing of wonder.

Emma clocked out at five and started to get back in the car to head home. But to her surprise, she discovered a note on the dash, which hadn't been there when she left that morning. It contained nothing but the sketch of a ship.

She looked at it, looked at it again, then grinned. She swung behind the wheel and backed out, but instead of driving back home, she headed for the marina instead.

The _Jolly Roger _was moored up at the end of the pier in its usual place. Now that all the spells had been removed from it, Killian didn't go off as much as he used to; when it was enchanted, he could sail it by himself, but now that it was just a regular wood-and-canvas ship, he needed the rest of his crew. Not that that was entirely a problem, as they were certainly up for piling aboard and ransacking the Maine coast, but while the residual curse that kept people in Storybrooke was broken or at least severely weakened, leaving for too long still caused amnesia in varying degrees. And since the last thing Emma needed was them all forgetting who they were here, and just going hog-wild on the pirate kick, she had somehow neglected to tell them this.

She parked and walked down the marina to the ship, knocked on the hull, and climbed aboard. Looking around curiously, she saw that the deck looked deserted, and wondered if she'd somehow been mistaken about the note. But she didn't think –

At that moment, a fairy light started to shine on the top of the mast. Just one at first, and then in a cascading waterfall of multicolored glow, raced down the rigging, bathing the entire ship in its iridescent shimmer. The worn timbers looked almost golden, the stars sparkling on the dark water. She looked up at it in total wonder, then jumped and turned when a voice spoke from behind her.

"Like it, lass?"

Emma looked over to see Killian stepping out from the shadows, grinning so broadly that he appeared about to split his face. He was dressed in full leather; she hadn't seen him in it for a while, as it was for obvious reasons impractical when chasing a hellion two-year-old. As he sauntered toward her, she could see both the devil-may-care scoundrel she'd first encountered in the Enchanted Forest, and the man she'd chosen, her lover, her partner, her rival, her soulmate. Of all the ridiculous things, he'd lived long enough to find her, and she'd found him.

"I see you're speechless," Hook murmured, reaching her, slipping his arms around her waist, and bending to kiss her neck. "That doesn't happen very often, my beautiful blonde harpy."

"You just called me a harpy!"

"You've called me far worse," he pointed out, smirking.

"I have never called you anything you didn't deserve." Emma slid her arms around his waist, laying her head against his chest, hearing his heart thumping solidly beneath her ear. "Where are the kids?"

"Dropped them with your parents."

"Aren't they trying to have Valentine's Day too?"

"Darling, I do suppose you've noticed that I'm not the _only _reason our dear little Miss Alexandra Jones is spoiled to within an inch of her life? They were utterly delighted to spend time with their grandchildren and have dinner with them. Take note of this, as you won't hear me say it again, but there _are _advantages to exploiting the pure nobility and good hearts of your in-laws."

"Pirate," Emma mumbled, snuggling closer. He kissed her hair, and the two of them stood swaying on the deck, just holding each other. Then he stepped back, took her by the hand, and led her into his cabin, the place where they'd enjoyed so many encounters before moving to the house. It too was shrouded in ethereal, glittering beauty, candles seemingly floating in the air without support. Wherever Killian had found this magic, she was willing to bet it wasn't Gold.

"Where did you…?"

"Fairies, love," he said, endeavoring mightily to look only modestly smug. "I still know a few."

Emma cocked an eyebrow at him and moved to sit at the ornate table, which had been cleared of the usual stacks of rubbish that accumulated on it and set with a lavish dinner for two instead. He uncorked the wine with his hook, flicked it off the end, and gallantly poured her a glass; she giggled and toasted him as he supplied himself with his own. "To you, Captain Jones."

"To you, Captain Swan-Jones." They clinked and drank.

Dinner was delicious, enough so that Emma was certain Killian hadn't made it himself; apart from burning coffee, his culinary talents extended to using a can opener (his hook) and tearing open packaging (also with his hook). But she saw no cause to complain, and after three glasses of wine apiece, both of them were agreeably tipsy. That was when the night's real entertainment could begin, when he could stand her in the middle of the cabin and slowly, tenderly undress her piece by piece, for once without ripping any of it, worshiping with kisses every new stretch of skin he uncovered. Then when she was down to the, so to speak, bare essentials, it was her turn.

One thing Emma alternately loved (or hated, depending on the situation) was the sheer bloody complexity of getting Killian out of his pirate outfit. There were ornate buttons, esoteric fastenings, leather, more leather, sometimes even the occasional frill of lace or silk, and as she didn't have a hook for a hand, just ripping it straight off him wasn't an option. She took her time as he had with her, kissing his ankle, the long corded calf, his thigh furred with dark hair, the place where his hip joined his leg, the deep vee of his abdominal muscles and the hard plane of his stomach. She loved how beautiful he was; on a completely shallow level, she didn't think she'd ever seen a more perfectly constituted specimen of the human male. But more than that, she loved who he was. It hadn't come easy. His thirst for revenge had almost destroyed him, as well as causing pain and harm to other people she cared about. She had certainly not approved of everything he'd done, the choices he'd made, but that was the thing about stories, about fairytales. No matter how much they got wrong, there was still so much they got right.

Emma finished her work, sat back on her heels, and looked up at him. Killian Jones in the nude was really one of the universe's finest accomplishments, especially when he was standing rooted to the spot, trembling; if he knew the rosary, he would certainly be reciting it over and over. She grinned maliciously at him, then, leaning in slow and luxuriously, took him in her mouth.

Killian jerked, uttered an incoherent noise, and grabbed a fistful of her hair, sliding the silky blonde locks through his fingers and pulling her closer to him. She quirked an eyebrow again, her lips being occupied, and put her hands behind his thighs, running them up and down. She flicked him with her tongue, causing even more entertaining noises, and reached up with one hand to hold tight to his hook, connecting them through flesh and bone and its cool curve of metal, a familiar part of him now, not an alien threat. Moved to taste him deeper, to explore him, to join him.

Killian groaned, rocking back and forth on his heels, pawing at her with his good hand. He seemed to be trying to get away, to return some of the pleasure to her before he went over the edge, but she had no intention of letting him do so. She kept on mercilessly tonguing him, adding the faintest scrape of teeth, working with her lips, until at last he groaned again and lost control, jerking and shuddering as he spilled himself.

Emma swallowed, then pulled away, breathing hard and grinning. Running her hands up his legs again, sliding her entire body close against him as she stood, she whispered in his ear, "Isn't that what harpies do?Seduce you?_"_

"I believe – you're thinking of a – siren, darling." Killian shuddered again, lips tangling in her sweaty hair. "Harpies – merely devour them alive. So actually – you're not far wrong."

Emma kissed him, then nipped at his ear, burying her face in his neck as he wrapped both arms around her waist and lifted her off her feet, carrying her toward the recesses of the expansive, silk-sheeted bed. They toppled onto it together, kissing and giggling like a pair of teenagers, growling at each other, wrestling, until they collapsed onto each other and just lay there, intimately entangled and having no intention of leaving the bed until morning came. If then.

"Hope my parents… mmm… didn't mind taking the kids for the night," Emma murmured. "That might be… a little awkward."

"Your parents are remarkably inventive people, love." Killian anchored his arm over her shoulders. "And quite frankly… I could care less… if your father should be denied in his, ahem, _objective… _so long as… I get mine."

"Selfish bastard."

"Pirate." He nipped her throat.

Emma laughed again, and rolled him over onto his back. "No sword to jab you with, I'm afraid," she breathed, climbing atop him and straddling him, pressing her hands on her shoulders and looking down at him, there, there, hers, _hers. _"But trust me… you _are _going to feel it."


	4. When The Morning Comes

**When the Morning Comes **for **onceuponacursedcaptain. **Rated: **M just in case.**

**Prompt: **_may i pretty please have an au where the curse never happened and emma the crown princess meets the charming captain hook? if you want a quote prompt or whatever just message me and thanks for being so generous! i LOVE you!_

This wasn't the first ball they had thrown this year. Or even the second, or the third. It was something like the two dozenth, in fact, and Emma was convinced, no matter how much her parents protested that it was to celebrate the new treaties they'd signed, the successful negotiation of peace with the last rebels loyal to King George's cause, and the defeat of the militant Winkies who'd been plundering the dwarves' mines in the western marches, that it was entirely to do with her. She was twenty-three, the heiress to the kingdom, able to ride a horse and handle a sword better than half the pompous young knights in the tails of visiting monarchs. She had been tutored in politics; she knew that the Winkies were robbing the mines in a desperate attempt to raise funds for a fight against a particularly wicked witch, and that solving the problem was not as simple as throwing them in the dungeon for thievery. Her mother had taught her how to bend a bow, her father had taught her about statecraft, her godmother Red had taught her about tracking and hunting, and her godfather Grumpy had taught her how to deck any misbehaving lout with a conveniently dwarf-sized punch to the kidneys. In short, she was tall, accomplished, blonde, and beautiful, and the kingdom's pride and joy. No wonder they wanted to put her on display. And, well, the other thing.

Emma's parents were the last people to tell her that she had to marry for state, or politics, or alliances, or any other reason besides love, but nonetheless, they were concerned about her apparently total lack of matrimonial prospects. When she was seventeen, she had rebelled, declared that she didn't _want _to be a princess and this place was _stifling _her, and ran off with an older boy, a sorcerer's apprentice named Baelfire. Bae clearly enjoyed showing the naïve, spoiled princess what life was "really like," but Emma had worked out fairly quickly that he wasn't quite who he presented himself as. He made cryptic allusions about being older than he looked, that some kind of rift with his powerful and mysterious father had caused him to run away from home, and that his mother had been killed by a band of pirates when he was quite young and he was still searching for the man responsible. A villainous hooked bastard, ugly as sin, seven feet tall with glowing red eyes and a coal-black soul to match his rotten heart. Emma took this description with more than a grain of salt. Bae liked telling stories.

Nonetheless, for a girl who'd lived her entire life in a castle, her every need attended to, her family close and loving, her godparents ready to support her if she ever felt she couldn't tell her parents anything (and in Grumpy's case, take her to do things that she couldn't tell her parents about) Bae's worldliness was a revelation. She thought he was the smartest man alive, the edgiest, the cleverest. She'd had to disguise herself on their travels, otherwise word would certainly have gotten back to Snow and Charming, but she cut her hair and dressed as a boy. And after Bae told her that he loved her and would never leave her, she'd given him her maiden's gift in the sheets of a shabby bed at a crossroads inn. She'd believed him.

Only a few weeks later, however, when they were crossing through the northern boundaries of the kingdom on the way to find a mythic treasure that Bae promised was hidden on the other side, they ran hard afoul of a band of vicious ice giants. Emma unslung her sword and shouted at him to help her, but he'd just hesitated and stared at her. She'd lost sight of him, fighting for her life, and when the tumult finally cleared, she realized in utter, numb horror that he was gone. He'd cut and run and left her to, as far as he knew, be slaughtered and torn apart limb from limb. All the promises. All the visions of a better life. He'd dropped it in an instant and booked it.

Emma, obviously, hadn't been killed, but that didn't make it better. The giants were bloodthirsty, but they weren't stupid, and they realized that with the missing princess in their hands, they were now in position to ask anything they wanted from Snow and Charming, who had been fighting to cut down on their general lawlessness and disruption. They liked to treat Emma as a plaything, a doll and a pet, once giving her to one of their children for a particularly nightmarish few days of playing "baby." By the time it was done, Emma was a mental and physical wreck, finally reunited with her distraught parents, who couldn't understand why she would ever leave when they had always given her everything she needed and wanted. A wisewoman was discreetly procured to ensure that the scandal was not deepened with an illegitimate pregnancy, and the kingdom had been in an uproar for months afterward.

Ever since, for obvious reasons, Emma had been bitterly lukewarm at best at the idea of contracting a new romantic engagement. She supposed she would have to marry someday, eventually, provide an heir for the kingdom and all that, but she had never again wanted it.

It had, however, now been six years since the Bae incident, and her parents, while they'd patiently stood by her as she healed, had started gently encouraging her to move on. When she'd pretty much blown them off, they started organizing the balls, each with a thin veneer of political pretext in an attempt to throw her off the trail, but she was well aware of what they were really up to. Even if they really were celebrating the defeat of the Georgian faction who claimed that her father was an illegitimate impostor to the throne, polite manners surely didn't dictate that every halfway attractive, decently born, breathing, male, and trouser-wearing individual in the kingdom had to score an invite. They'd all want to dance with her, they'd all tell her how much they'd heard of her talents and of course, her beauty, and they'd all be perfect gentlemen until she told them bluntly that she'd never marry a man who couldn't outfight her, and challenged them to a bout in the training yard. Every time they picked themselves out of the mud, fuming and humiliated while Grumpy and the other six dwarves laughed uproariously from the sidelines, they'd rush out the gates and never be seen again. Emma didn't miss them. Maybe it was something about her father being Prince Charming, but she had high standards for men.

This ball, therefore, was clearly going to be the same again. She didn't want to upset her parents by flat-out refusing to attend, as they had gone to a lot of time and trouble for it and even gotten her a brand-new fairy-made gown, but she couldn't face the prospect of the whole inane rigmarole again. Her maids helped her get dressed, and the blue fairy flew in to add a diamond necklace, earrings, and tiara to her ensemble, the last nestled delicately in Emma's long blonde curls. Then Blue turned her to the mirror. "Look. You're beautiful."

"I don't really care about being beautiful," Emma mumbled. "It just seems so… pointless. I'm pretty sure they've invited every so-called nice boy in the Forest by now. I don't know, maybe since I'm the product of true love myself, I don't have one. I'd … cancel it out or something."

"I don't think so," Blue said reproachfully. "Everyone can have a true love. Believe me, Princess, you will find yours, as long as you look. You just have to keep your heart open."

Emma crossed her eyes and pulled a face at Blue's back, causing the fairy to remark, "I saw that," before evanescing in a ball of sapphire light. Keep her heart open? Sure. That kind of thinking was what had gotten her in trouble with Bae in the first place. She wondered if she could get away with just making a cameo appearance at the ball tonight, then shuck off the dress, the prissy slippers, the jewels, and slip into a tunic and breeches. Find her best friend, Red's daughter Ruby, and hide somewhere in the castle like they were still sixteen, sharing fevered secrets and whispers about boys. Emma had used to think that Ruby was so lucky, being a wolf and all, able to run out whenever she wanted to. It had been that urge for adventure which had caused her to run away herself, the next year.

Emma sighed, chasing the memories away, and turned around at a knock on her door, just in time to see her father enter. Charming had been on the throne for almost twenty-five years, twenty-five hard years, and his original boyish handsomeness had given way to a dignified, mature man, silver touching his close-cropped sandy hair and lines framing his blue eyes. But they still lit up on the sight of his daughter. "Sweetheart. May I escort you to the ball?"

"I guess so," Emma said, mustering up a smile as she took his arm. "What's the excuse tonight?"

"We've finally dealt with the pirate threat that's been menacing the coast. You'll remember the tales of a crew led by a terrible captain, causing all kinds of havoc in search of something… a knife, I think the story was. I don't understand it, but we finally captured the first mate, a man named William Smee. He was willing to talk, after a while, and he told us where the ship, the _Jolly Roger, _makes berth. We sent soldiers in, ambushed the crew, captured the ship. One of them fessed up to being the captain, and he's in stocks and fetters, awaiting his trial." Charming smiled; he liked doing justice. "That deserves a ball, don't you think?"

"I suppose," Emma murmured, taking mincing little steps to avoid trodding on the hem of her dress, as they descended the sweeping staircases into the castle and everyone turned to look at them. Suddenly and most unwantedly, she couldn't help but think of Bae, and the tale he'd told her about hunting for the fearsome pirate who had slain his mother. _Seven feet tall with glowing red eyes? _Apparently not. Just a small-time criminal who liked killing and hurting people, until he turned into a coward and paid the price. Like the rest of Bae's fables, that was a lie too.

The great hall of the castle was festooned with fairy lights and icicle sculptures, all the kingdom glitterati milling around and socializing, eyeing up each other's fashions, a hum of well-bred conversation filling the air. They all turned to pay their respects as Charming and Emma entered, and Emma glanced around in an attempt to locate the latest dolt who would be putting the moves on her tonight. She saw any number of likely culprits, and permitted herself a small sigh as the master of ceremonies formally opened the occasion and the seneschal gave a long and boring speech about how they'd finally quashed the pirate threat. Then the music struck up, a lively, toe-tapping reel with pipes and viols and lutes and drums, and the dancing began.

Emma was whirled through the expected paces by the expected squad of well-meaning but tedious young noblemen; tonight's crop was so dull that she couldn't bring herself to feign even the most perfunctory interest, and she hoped she didn't accidentally cause a diplomatic incident. She was just about to detach herself, go get a cup of punch, when a man she had never seen before stepped out from behind a pillar. "Before you flee, Your Highness… the honor?"

She gaped at him, partly because of the surprise and partly because she had never seen anyone, ever, who was that sheerly, viscerally attractive. She couldn't imagine how he'd gotten in without causing half the women present to faint, unless he'd worn a mask. He was taller than her, lean and trim, with crisp dark hair, blue eyes, stubble, and a shirt open at the throat deep enough to reveal a sculpted, furry chest. He wore a black glove on his left hand, which he held oddly stiff, and the usual costume of rich clothing, fashionable half-cape attached to his doublet with a golden brooch in the shape of a fishhook. He reached out with his right hand, tarnished rings glittering on his fingers, and gave her a crooked grin that caused her blood to rush to all sorts of unladylike places. "May I steal a dance?"

"I…" Emma swallowed. Oh no, she was not just going to fling herself into the arms of this living god; she could tell just by looking at him that he was one of those men who knew exactly how to use that face. "I was actually…"

"Oh, come on, lass. Just one. This is my favorite song."

The minstrels were currently playing what Emma recognized as an old sea shanty with an irresistible, upbeat tune, "The Fisherman's Wife," and she hesitated; she'd always liked the song too. And besides, one dance, why not? She was probably never going to see him again.

"All right," she said, and curtsied.

He grinned at her again, bowed, and wrapped his left arm around her waist, taking her right hand in his own, and steered her immediately onto the floor. As they waltzed and spun, eyes locked on each other, she said lightly, "I didn't catch your name, my lord…?"

"Catch my name? Did I drop it?" The smile he gave her this time was distinctly feral, a flash of white teeth, a hot breath on her throat as the dance drew them close again. Just being pressed up against his body like this… she hadn't been close to any man since Bae, hadn't even felt like this since Bae… who _was _he?! This wasn't fair! Five minutes of knowing each other, and her heart was tripping too fast, her breath trapped in her throat. He wanted something, but what?

"This song would be even better if they'd actually sing the words," her partner murmured, lips brushing her ear. "Yet I can see why that wouldn't be advisable at a formal royal ball."

"What words?" Too late, she realized this might not have been the wisest question.

Indeed, that wickedly seductive smile took a turn for the even wickeder. He had a cultured accent, a gentleman's manners, an angel's face, and a devil's soul, as proved when he leaned still closer and began whispering the lyrics, so ribald that Emma felt her cheeks turning a flaming shade of red. About halfway through, she pushed his face away. "You… pervert!"

"Pervert, darling?" Apparently nothing could shake that smug smirk. "Oh now, let's not go there, Your Highness. Everyone knows the stories about _you._"

Emma could have slapped him. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh, I don't know. What am I? You've always behaved like a perfect princess, haven't you? No rebelling, no running away… ladylike as could be, that's you. But you're restless. You don't fully belong in the castle, and yet you were burned by what happened the last time you left. You want adventure, but not at the cost of vulnerability." He leaned in, his mouth in her hair, surely able to hear the way her heart was hammering as he whirled her across the floor, as if they were the only two people in the entire great hall. "Try something new, darling. It's called trust."

"What the…" Emma had never met a man like this in her entire life. "I don't know your name, I don't know why you're here, I've never seen you before, and you want me to…?"

He slid his gloved left hand lusciously down her back, coming to rest in the small of it. It felt…strange, like wood, almost. That, and shockingly intimate. "Come with me, Your Highness."

"The last time I ran away with a man…" She bit her tongue. She had no need to admit any of this to him, especially after her parents had worked so diligently to cover up the scandal and make it go away. It was _none _of his damn business, either. _Who was he?_

Somehow, he heard that thought. "If you want to know," he murmured, in the most mind-meltingly unfair voice she'd ever heard, "you have to take a chance."

And with that, he released her so suddenly that she stumbled, cold air rushing against all the places his body had been pressed up against her just a moment ago. He tipped her a sarcastic salute and strode away.

Emma stared after him. Part of her wanted to abandon every scrap of royal dignity she had, run after him, and throw herself around his neck like a common floozy. The rest of her, the rational side, forcibly intervened. _No, are you crazy? Seriously, are you crazy? You can't take a chance like that, for a man like him… no. No. No._

But now that she'd seen him, for the rest of the night she couldn't get him out of her head.

—

The next day brought the trial of the _Jolly Roger's _captain, a sniveling middle-aged man who insisted that they were doing him a wrong and if they'd just not hurt him, he'd show them where to find more treasure. His arguments were unpersuasive, however, and for the terror, havoc, and death he and his crew had wreaked up and down the coast, he was sentenced to die. But as it was being prepared, the archers brought in and the post mounted, he began squealing and pleading that he wasn't actually the captain. It had all been a ruse. He wasn't Captain Hook. He wasn't, _really._ Hook had been forewarned of the ambush, and got away in time.

A condemned prisoner would say anything in hopes of sparing the noose, but when Charming glanced at his daughter, Emma, looking troubled, nodded slowly. She'd always had the talent of being able to tell when people were lying, and while it had seemed to desert her around Bae, some men were more transparent than others. So far as she could tell, this pathetic little footstool really was just taking the fall for someone else much more formidable and elusive.

This caused quite a disruption to the previously straightforward execution, and it was decided that until they knew who he was for sure, they couldn't run the risk of killing an innocent man. Not that this fellow was innocent either, as he'd surely had his part in the pirates' crimes, but he wouldn't die in Hook's place. He was returned to the dungeons, under heavy guard.

Emma returned to her chambers in a distracted haze, not sure why she felt so oddly unsettled by this news. Her father had been so certain that they'd caught the pirate, but if not… That _did _argue a considerable degree of cunning and danger, perhaps actually coming close to the dread tales Bae had told her of the blackguard's reputation. And if so…

Emma entered her room, barred the door behind her, and removed her princess' tiara with a sigh; she had to wear it for formal events like this, and it gave her a headache. She took a step toward her bed, intending to sit down and read for a while, otherwise clear her mind. She had far too much to even think about and she –

At that moment, a figure stepped out from behind the curtains, grabbed her wrist with one hand, and clapped the other over her mouth.

It was almost unnecessary; Emma was too shocked to scream. Then sense returned, she began to struggle, and her mysterious attacker held her tighter against him. Something about her flesh responded, recognized his, and by the time he turned her around, she already knew who it was. The mysterious man who'd almost seduced her at the ball, apparently back for – _what?_

"Don't scream, love," he whispered, thumb caressing her lips. "It would get messy."

"You…" Emma's heart was screaming off the rails. "You… what are you…"

"I'm here for you, lass." He smiled. "A man takes my woman from me, I become… peculiar. Well, the crocodile took one woman from me, and now your father has taken another. I might not be able to face off with the Dark One just yet, but I think I can manage a princess."

At that, Emma's paralysis snapped. She was still stunned, but now she was reacting; all that warrior training hadn't gone for nothing. She grabbed his hand and wrenched his arm over his head, threw his feet out from under him with a leg sweep, and took off running. There was a secret passage in her room that she'd used to sneak out of the castle many times, and she jammed it open, throwing herself down it and frantically trying to slam it shut as he roared and charged after her. She couldn't get it latched; he caught it full with his left hand and flung it aside, shoving himself down the passage after her. She let go of the trapdoor and ran.

Her breath grated in her ears as she took one crazy turn after another, down, down, deeper under the castle than she'd ever been before. She was praying to lose him in the labyrinths, but he was fast, cunning… dangerous. He seemed to anticipate her movements, apparently not even winded, while she was gasping and flagging. Finally, as she dove around a corner into an unused dark cell filled with straw, the only light coming from a slitted air hole fifty feet above, she realized that there was no way out. He'd cornered her.

"That's… a good girl." He loomed in the doorway. "No need for this unpleasantness. I'm not going to hurt you. But your father stole my woman, and I plan a much more enjoyable revenge."

Emma stared blankly at him. Her parents had an exceptionally happy and faithful marriage, Charming had never taken a mistress of any kind. "You're lying."

"Am I, love? Use your little talent and find out. But this woman wasn't the flesh-and-blood type. No. Wood and sails. Taken from me most uncouth."

It took a moment, but it hit. She felt faint. "You. _You're_ Captain Hook."

He raised his hands as if to applaud. "Very _good, _love."

"And you…" Her back hit damp stone. There was nowhere else to go. "What do you _want?"_

"As I said." He looked surprised that she was even still asking. "You."

"Why?"

"Well, your charming father having taken my ship from me… it seems only fair that I get to seduce his daughter in his own castle."

"And just what makes you think _that _will happen?"

"Because of the way you were looking at me at the ball." He was closer now, though she hadn't seen him move. "Because I'm not like any of the idiots you've met before. You bested me, princess. That makes you intriguing. I love a challenge."

Emma did her best not to shudder as he reached her with one more step, those dazzlingly blue eyes staring down into hers. "You're a villain," she said weakly. "All those people you killed on the coast, looking for – what? A knife? There are knives everywhere."

"Ah, but darling, this is a very special knife. And I didn't kill them. I'm not that messy of an eater. If one or two got in the way and had to be disposed of… that's not quite the same thing."

"Yes, it is. It's still murder. You're a…"

"Pirate?" he whispered, lips half an inch from hers. "You could say that."

Emma shuddered. His body was pressing her full length into the stone, his right hand sliding down her side, his knee between her legs. Despite the situation, she wanted nothing more than to seize his head and kiss him, to fight back… to best him. Did he think she was a shrinking violet, a damsel in distress? He was about to get a big damn shock.

"Oh, I see," she whispered coyly. "You've come to ravage me."

The smile he flashed back was criminal. He lifted his head, turned toward her, she leaned in, and they crashed together in the middle, devouring each other in a mad, wet, hot kiss. She opened her mouth, dueling her tongue with his, sliding her hands beneath his shirt, exploring the hard grooves of muscle and the column of spine, so hungry for him, hungrier than she could have possibly believed. When he tried to pull away, she bit his lower lip hard enough that he gasped, and trailed kisses on the underside of his jaw, that ridiculous jaw, to his ear, back to his mouth like a pilgrim coming home. She waited until he was heaving before she let him breathe.

Hook wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looking stunned. "Where the hell did a sweet little princess learn to kiss like that?"

"Who said I was sweet?" Emma murmured, leaning forward just far enough to torment him. His eyes almost crossed as he stared at her; she could recognize the symptoms of dumb lust well enough. Perhaps he _had_ cooked up this whole madcap plot to steal into the king and queen's castle and bed the princess simply in revenge for them capturing his ship, but he clearly hadn't wagered on wanting the princess herself quite so badly.

Well. Too bloody bad for him.

As Hook moved toward her again, Emma reached for him with both arms, pulling him closer as they slid down the cell wall and tumbled into the straw together, kissing open-mouthed, heavily, rolling over and over. She got on top of him, and he groaned and arched his hips, grinding his hardness into her through their clothes; her head went light, and she pressed back on him, sustaining the friction. Then she got hold of his wrists, drew them slowly over his head, and pressed them flat, feeling with her fingers that his left hand was in fact made of wood; he had apparently attached something to the stump to deflect suspicion. _Hook… of course. _All the tales Bae had told her flashed through her head again, and what the pirate himself had said. _The crocodile took my woman from me. _But Bae had said his mother was killed…

Emma bent down and kissed the pirate again, deeply, luxuriously, caressingly, until his long lashes swept over his blue eyes in a veil of starving lust. She waited until those eyes were fixed on her, until she was certain she was the only thing he saw. Then she reached out, snagged one of the old iron cuffs chained to the wall, and linked it around his right wrist and snapped it shut.

Hook almost didn't realize what had happened; he was too involved in getting his mouth all over hers. But something tipped him off, and he stopped abruptly, frowning. "What the…?"

Emma gave her hips one more little thrust against his, pleased to hear the actual whimper that emerged from his throat. Then she rolled off and stood up. "How does revenge feel?"

He stared at her, honestly confused. "Princess… what did you…?"

At that moment, he realized that he was chained, and the expression on his face turned into shock. "You!" he bellowed, trying to shake it free with no success. "You lying little – "

"Pirate?" Emma whispered. "Oh, but I'm not a sweet little princess, am I? And you want me to take a chance? All right. Listen up. I won't tell anyone that you're down here… until the morning comes. Then they'll be along to retrieve you and I'm sure, imprison you and sentence you to death. But if you can escape beforehand…" She shrugged. "Aren't you the feared Captain Hook? It should be easy for you."

"Emma!" He rattled at the handcuff. "You – "

She bent down, pinned his flailing left arm with her hand, and kissed him, fast as a snake. "When the morning comes," she repeated. "I'd say you have about twelve hours."

He actually didn't have words to answer that one. She had soundly gotten the better of him, and she had a feeling he'd remember it. Remember her. She had a feeling that she was going to see him again, that he was not done with her. But she only smirked at him and turned around, striding out of the cell. Then slammed the door shut.

_"EMMA!"_

She grinned wickedly, and started to run.


	5. I Will Always Find You

**I Will Always Find You **for **theonewhoknits, **rated **T.**

**Prompt: **_Emma doesn't want to be found. But Hook will find her. He will always find her. I'm just so caught on the idea of her feeling the need to disappear completely (to protect the fam, or whatever) and him finding her._

The dark road beyond the pale sweep of her headlights was nothing but a blur through her tears. Her hands were shaking as she steered the old yellow Bug around the curve in the narrow two-lane road, gravel crunching under its tires. She probably shouldn't be driving right now; she had to keep only one hand on the wheel, using the other to wipe her face as silent sobs continued to shake her ribcage. She felt like she'd been gutted, like the tears were coming out of her rhythmically by now, without her volition, just something that had always been and would always be. She couldn't imagine that it would stop. She couldn't imagine that it would be okay.

She was never going to see Storybrooke, Maine, again.

Emma stared straight ahead at the dark asphalt ribbon of the road, winding in and out among the shadowy trees. She didn't know where she was going and she didn't even care; her few worldly goods were carelessly thrown in the back seat, a pitifully scant record of a life. But even worse, she had the memories this time, the memories she had thought she'd never have. Her mother. Her father. Her son. Her place. Her job, her home, her life.

And him.

She was never going to see him again either.

Emma choked on a fresh gust of tears. She couldn't do this, she had to pull over, and she just made it off the road before she came totally unglued, leaning on the wheel and almost screaming in agony, beating her fists against the dash, as if it would somehow remedy the injustice of what had just happened, what she'd agreed to. Cora, Regina, and Gold were just too powerful, and she had been deluding herself to think she could ever match up with them. Gold had threatened to kill Hook, and Cora had threatened to kill Emma's parents, if she herself didn't pack up, leave Storybrooke, and give Henry back to Regina and make things go back to the way they were before she ever came. As if they would. As if they possibly could.

Emma, of course, had fiercely resisted; there was no way she wasn't going to fight for the people she loved. When she'd pleaded with Gold that he had no reason to want her out of the way, he had replied calmly, "Actually, Miss Swan, I do. You're preventing me from doing something that I want very much, and I've never been the sort of man who takes well to rivals. And now that I've made a truce with Cora – " he cocked his head at the witch – "who _is _going to permit me to do something I want very much, I'm afraid that her arguments are simply too persuasive. I'm very sorry, dearie. It's nothing personal. But if you want your parents and your thrice-damned pirate to see another sunrise, you'd better pack up your car and leave forever, tonight."

Emma didn't understand, couldn't process the betrayal, couldn't move. She'd done the only thing she could: lunged at him. But he knocked her aside with a negligent flick of the hand, a crash of almighty dark magic that even she couldn't resist. It left her sprawled on her back and gasping, and the pawnbroker limped over to her with deliberate, steady taps of his cane.

"That, dearie," he said, "was not very wise. I'm not accustomed to giving more than one warning, and now you've made me angry. I advise listening closely to what I'm about to say. You're going to go to your apartment and get your things. While you're there, a certain pirate is going to pay you a visit, and beg you not to go. He might even claim that he loves you. In which case, you are going to tell him in no uncertain terms… that you do not."

"Or what?" Emma gasped. "You'll kill me?"

"No, dearie." Gold's face split into a spectral grin. "I'll kill _him."_

—-

Emma sobbed on the side of the road until she'd run out of tears, until her eyes were hot and hard and hollow. She didn't know how long. She wished she had a potion to drink to forget this, to make it go away. She couldn't forget the confrontation at her apartment as she'd been blindly throwing things into a suitcase, when Hook crashed through the front door without the barest semblance of politeness, demanded to know if she was leaving, telling her that she _couldn't, _begging her not to. And then he'd done it. When she asked him in a trembling voice why he should even care if she went, he cursed, smashed a vase of flowers off the table with his hook, and roared, "Gods damn it, woman! Why do you think? Because I bloody _love _you!"

There had been a thundering silence after that, neither of them able to believe that he'd said it. Then he reached for her with that desperately earnest look in his eyes, the one he'd had right after she'd taken his hand and pulled him out of the rubble in the giant's den, right before she'd snapped the cuff over his wrist. But he was the one grabbing her wrist now, making her look into his eyes, and saying, "I know you do too, lass. I know that you – "

"No," she said. "I don't."

"And I – what?"

"I don't love you." The words sounded calm, impossibly calm. So much that she didn't even think it was her who had said them. Oh God. She had. She'd done it.

He reached for her, breathing, "Lass, no, you don't mean that, _no," _trying to touch her cheek with his good hand. But she'd turned away, unable to stand the look of shocked, numb betrayal on his face, unable to trust herself to maintain the ruse.

"No," she said again, faintly, as she hefted the suitcase. "No, I don't love you, Hook. I never did. Whatever you thought we had, what we could have had… we don't. It's over. You have to let go. Please, you have to trust me when I say… I don't."

His hand fell away from her. He just looked simply too stunned to say a word. She turned and started to walk, one foot after the other, down the stairs, out into the night, out, out, out, gone.

—-

The eastern horizon was turning bloodstained red by the time Emma started the Bug again. She was somewhere in the ass-end of Maine, didn't even know if she was driving north or south. Dumbly, through her haze of grief, she supposed that her only option was to go back and try to pick up her old life in Boston. Return to her job as a bail bondsperson, maybe see if a unit in her old apartment building was up for rent. . go back to being the abandoned orphan who had no son, who had one-night stands as her only form of intimacy and was the first to kick the guy out if he wanted to cuddle too long afterwards. She didn't see how she could even pretend. To have _had _her family, her life, her place, and then losing it, was worse than never having it at all.

Mad ideas whirled around her brain. She could try to call the cops, a SWAT team, bring in all kinds of firepower, guns blazing. But that was the worst thing she could possibly do. The town would be exposed, its people turned into freak shows or confined to psychiatric institutions, and by the time she got anywhere near her parents, Henry, or Hook, they'd all be dead. She would tear apart everything and everyone. This way, as horrible and unbearable as it was… they'd survive, her parents would somehow have to live knowing she was there, she was out there, but they'd never see her again… Henry… oh God, Henry, and Hook…

If Emma thought about it any more, the pain would just be too much. She turned on her phone, started GPS, got a rough direction as to how far she needed to go to get onto southbound I-95, and pulled out, driving without looking back. She turned on the radio, but it was playing some bad heartbreak song that she couldn't stand to listen to.

She'd been driving for about an hour when it started to rain. Heavy, massive thunderheads rolled in like beaten gunmetal, closing a wet fist on the black trees, pounding the pavement until it turned to billowing steam. Even her wipers set on the very highest level couldn't scrub it away fast enough, and her knuckles turned white as she fought to keep the Bug from hydroplaning out of control on the narrow, snaking road. It felt like this in rural Maine: a hundred miles from the ass-end of anywhere, and her cell phone had been on zero bars for a while. If she –

One moment she didn't see it, the next she did. She didn't even know what it was, just that it flashed past her in a blur, then rushed straight at the windshield, causing her to scream, jerk the wheel, and feel the tires lose contact with pavement as the car went into a sustained, spinning nosedive. Emma hauled on the wheel uselessly as she kept sliding, thinking madly of the wolf in the road the night she'd first come to Storybrooke, and –

She had no more time to contemplate that thought. The Bug tilted, tipped, and met the thick trees bordering the highway with an awful, rending crash. She saw the hood crunch almost in slow motion, saw the windshield start to give out, could see almost the individual flecks of glass in the stormy air, brilliant as chips of diamond.

She didn't remember consciously reaching for it. Only that she did. The hot heart of magic, hands flinging out in what was certainly a futile attempt to save herself. The glow sizzling down her fingers, catching the glass against its shield.

_Magic always comes with a price._

She somehow thought she'd already paid it.

—-

Emma regained consciousness she had not the faintest idea how long later. She was lying under the crumpled undercarriage of the Bug in a faceful of sodden mud, leaves, and motor oil dripping steadily from the mangled guts of her car. She had no clue how she'd gotten free, if the magic had flung her out, if she'd crawled out on her own power and forgotten when she blacked out, and she was soaked, cold, freezing, and scared out of her mind.

"Oh God…" The words issued involuntarily from her lips as she staggered to her feet, balancing herself with a hand on the destroyed fender. She limped back around and tried to unjam the driver's side door, in hopes of getting her cell phone and wallet out, and finally managed to crawl back in. The steering column was sheared off, driven all the way into the seat in a way that certainly would have impaled her too if she'd still been in it. For whatever reason, she wasn't.

Emma felt around gingerly in the darkness, trying to avoid slicing her hand to pieces on the broken glass, until she finally pawed at her cell phone with the tips of her fingers and drew it out. She didn't want to just leave it – all her worldly goods were in there, after all – but after a moment, she turned away. If this was what her fate was, perhaps a clean break was better. She could collect new possessions without the old memories embedded in them.

But she wanted those memories. So badly.

She dawdled by the car, debating the idea of trying to get back in and – and do what? Carry all her shit with her? It wasn't raining anymore, but the air was heavy, damp, and misty. She needed to get back to the highway, hope to thumb a ride, and also that every clichéd slasher movie she'd ever seen was just that. Surely not everybody driving by had chainsaws and duct tape in their back seats. She had another memory of almost hitting Jefferson, who turned out to be a psychotic schizophrenic who drugged her tea and tied up her mother and would have hurt her too if she didn't…

_He just wanted to go home._

So did she. So did she.

But home didn't exist anymore.

Aimlessly, at last, Emma started to walk, boots sloshing in the leaves. She had a vague idea of which way it was back to the road, but she hoped it wasn't far; she'd twisted her ankle badly, and it throbbed with every step. She kept neurotically checking her cell phone, as if she somehow expected it to have acquired a single solitary bar of service. It hadn't.

Rain whispered in the branches above her. She craned her head, trying to tell which direction the sun was in hopes of working out some rudimentary sense of direction, but it was hopeless; it was twilight already, and darkness fast falling. It was like some kind of never-ending forest, like something had happened when the magic had come out of her…

Something that had happened when the savior left Storybrooke.

Deciding at last to listen to her instincts, Emma halted, leaves swirling around her. She had, she realized now, been fighting something, as if she was walking against the wind, into the teeth of some invisible, fierce resistance. She closed her eyes, breathing the damp scents of forest and earth, feeling _something _new moving around her fingers, stirring invisible threads. It was just so much like her. This, whatever it was, had saved her life, but she had trained herself so long to be deaf to her heart, and to suspect any airy-fairy unquantifiable, unreasonable instincts, that she was still stubbornly trying to forge her own path.

"I'm sorry," Emma said aloud, to the silent, watching trees. Her body heaved with an expelled breath, the shadows of the ghosts that seemed to hang close enough to touch. She stood very still, listening instead of leading. For a woman as self-sustaining and strong-willed as she was, stubborn and independent and solitary, it was like asking her to gnaw off her own arm.

After a moment, however, she thought she heard something. Not even a noise outside her, but a still small voice within herself. The sort of thing that Archie would have called a conscience, but more than that as well. Like a glowing thread running through her, leading her… where?

The only way to find out was to take a chance.

Try something new, darling.

It's called trust.

—

Emma had been walking for almost fifteen minutes when the ground started to slant down under her feet. She had kept her eyes closed – she saw the glowing thread that way, but it vanished when she opened them and tried to see for herself. She had been somehow able to navigate without her eyes; she could just sense where rocks and trees and ravines were in front of her. But when the ground turned to a muddy, steep slide and her footing gave out, her eyes jerked open and she grabbed and flailed at the bare roots jutting from the embankment as she tumbled down it. A moment later, she landed in a breathless, filthy heap on a scatter of seaweed-wracked stones, with her nose two inches from a tidepool and a curious-looking crab.

_The seashore. _Storybrooke was on the coast, of course, and her hours of driving had roughly paralleled it; it wasn't too improbable that she'd somehow stumbled on it. She pushed herself to her hands and knees, spitting out a mouthful of dirt, and looked out over the black glass pane of the ocean, lit by the rising moon. The shadows were deep and tricky, and she wasn't entirely certain of anything she had seen or hadn't seen recently, but she thought she could –

A ship.

Emma blinked and squinted hard, terrified that she was still hallucinating, but the image remained, imprinted stark and black against her weary eyes. It was definitely a ship, and not one of the corrugated little fisher tugs that plied their trade around here, off the Grand Banks. It was a tall, stately two-master, sails looking almost translucent in the witchy glow, anchored perhaps two or three hundred yards offshore. Her eyes raked it frantically, suspecting any, every kind of trap. They wanted her to come out there, they had commandeered it to retrieve her, had changed their mind about her potential use as a hostage, they would capture her and never let her…

Emma stared at it a moment longer, desperately gauging her chances, her choices. Then she stood up, stripped off her boots and her heavy leather jacket, and splashed into the water.

The ocean's embrace was so cold that it felt like knives. Gasping, she started into a clumsy breast stroke, bobbing along with her head above water, trying not to imagine any encounters with unpleasant marine life; she didn't think you got sharks this far north, but you never knew. Pulling hard against the onset of cramps, wondering if she could make it out; you had to have a whole bag of tricks as a bail bondsperson, and she'd once chased an escaping perp into the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of winter. But that was a long time ago, and she was different then.

It didn't matter. If she closed her eyes, she could still see that glowing thread ever so faintly, and she had to keep following it; by now, she didn't have much of a choice. She'd gone too far to try to make it back, and the ship loomed closer with painful slowness, stroke by stroke as she kicked and clawed through the cold water. She had no idea how deep it was. Deep enough to drown.

The waves were restless, choppy enough to further complicate the going. Emma's breath burned in her throat; salt chafed her lips and stung her eyes. She didn't want to put her head under, for fear the ship would have vanished when she surfaced, and the current was now distinctly against her, trying to tear her far out to sea. Even when she turned on her back, she was sinking.

At that moment, faintly, Emma heard a shout, distant and windblown in the night. Out of the corner of her fritzing vision, she saw a dark figure jump up on the side of the ship, fling off coat, swordbelt, and other hindrances, and execute a perfect form dive into the water with barely a splash. It – he resurfaced an instant later, and she saw a gleam of metal where his left hand should be. Of all the ludicrous, impossible things, it _was._

Adrenaline snarled madly through Emma from head to heel. Nothing short of an actual tsunami could have stopped her then, and she surged forward like an Olympic swimmer smelling the buzzer board, gasping, coughing on the water in her lungs. She couldn't tell if he'd seen exactly where she was, and she raised a hand, screaming in a hoarse salt-rasping croak. "Hook! _Hook!"_

The second the words had passed her lips, she was mortified. What if this was one of them in disguise, trying to get her to… to _something? _They'd said they'd kill him unless she told him that she didn't love him. What if she'd just failed the final test?

Even that, however, was not enough to get her to stop swimming. And he was powering through the waves toward her, sleek and dark and strong as a seal; of course, he _lived _on water, he knew how to handle it in its native environment. She was close enough to see the flash of his eyes now, and no matter how accomplished Cora was at shape-shifting, somehow Emma didn't think that the witch could replicate that look of pure, consuming relief, agony, and terror.

She cut out her next stroke halfway, and let the wave at her back slap her into Hook's arms.

He held her so tightly that she could barely tell which direction was up. He was saying something in a hoarse, choking voice, swearing over and over, and she started to cry, not even consciously or knowingly or anything except more salt water leaking out of her eyes and the heaving of her battered chest as he locked her against him with his hooked arm and used his good hand to pull hard against the current. She tried to help him as much as she could, and their bodies fell wordlessly, naturally in sync. Not even a minute later, they bumped gently up against the side of the _Roger._

Emma snagged hold of the wood with frozen, shaking hands, not sure she could manage even the comparatively short climb, but Hook never let go of her. He hauled her above him on their way up, a few ropes lashing down apparently of their own volition – of course, he'd said the ship was enchanted – to assist its captain on the ascent. Then they tumbled over the gunwale and sprawled out on the deck, soaking wet and gasping.

Both of them tried to say something at the same time, then gave it up as a lost cause. Emma scrambled into him, clinging to him, as he held her so tightly that she could not breathe and did not want to. Their mouths attacked each other, devouring, _kissing _barely an adequate word to cover it as they both made sobbing, breathless noises, rolling over and over and almost banging into the hatch cover, the mast, or any other of the obstructions present aboard a fully rigged-and-sailed wooden vessel. They kissed again and again, Emma tasting blood on her broken lips, until at last they rolled over once more and fetched to a halt, her collapsed on his chest and sobbing.

"Gods," Hook croaked at last, smoothing her hair out of her face. "What in the bloody hell… what are you… _mad, _you're bloody _mad, _what did you even… bloody woman, you scared the life out of…" He hesitated, as if terrified that she was going to shove him away again. "But what are you even… when you left, you…"

"No." Emma clung onto his still-wet shirt with both hands, desperate to make him understand, desperate to know the truth. "Wait. I – I have to make sure you are who you say. Not Cora, or – or any of them. What did you do to me at the top of the beanstalk, and what did I tell you?"

He cocked his head, as if he was at a loss for words, and her gut seized with terror. Then he reached out and clumsily smoothed her tangled, knotted hair out of her face, stroking her cheekbone with his thumb before he reached out, took her hand, and kissed the faint, faded white line across it. "You said you'd been in love," he said, almost in a whisper. "Once. And I suppose you meant it after all, lass. Though if that's what you were going to say, then you bloody confused me by what you just did. You seem to appreciate the fine art of tormenting me."

Emma bit her lip. She had no idea if it was safe to confess to him yet that it had been a lie, but the fact that she couldn't let go of him, that she was still shaking, must surely tell the truth. But she was terrified that someone was going to appear in a cloud of purple smoke and take him, rip his heart out, the pain made even worse by the false hope. She pressed her hand against his chest, felt it beating reassuringly beneath her fingers. She touched him again, smiling and crying in the way she had in the moments before losing Graham, a memory that frightened her further.

"How did you know?" she asked at last, softly. "How could you even know where to…"

Hook stared up at her, his face grim and set. "Love, you're not the only person who needs, right now, a bloody explanation. Tell me what's going on."

"I left." The words spilled out in a rush.

"I gathered that." The lines around his eyes remained chiseled as deeply as stone. He was, after all, three hundred-plus years old, and this was one of the first times she truly realized it.

"I… Hook, I'm sorry, I'm _sorry. _They threatened you. They told me that unless I told you that I didn't love you… if I didn't leave… you, my family, all of them… they'd kill them."

Hook didn't answer, but she heard the breath issue painfully out of him, his eyes gazing up at the stars now flecking the dark vaults of the sky above them. At length he said softly, "I believed it. Bloody hell, lass. I believed it."

"But you're here – ?" Her fingers ghosted over his face, desperate to touch him again.

"Yes," he admitted with a rueful smile. "It seems I am. Because I'm a sodding fool who doesn't know when to stop and who has wasted enough bloody years of his life chasing after the memories of women I've lost, it doesn't seem there's a sight else I can do with it. But you… you're _alive, _at least you're still _here… _not just in my head, which is a bloody demented place if you haven't guessed. And I've never been the sort of man who doesn't fight for what he wants, love. I was down to the marina the instant I saw you leave town in that bloody contraption of yours. I would have sailed…" He hesitated, his voice roughening. "I would have sailed all seven seas and back, I would have killed the world serpent, I would have gone to the very center of _hell, _if that was what it took to find you. I will always find you."

Emma laughed, heartbroken and euphoric at once. Then she bent to kiss him again, and this time there was no hesitation left between them as they lay on the deck in each other's arms, clothes drying slowly in the heat of their embrace, the moon overhead almost as bright as day. They kissed, then kissed again, then giggled and whispered, a lover's secret.

"What can we do, Killian?" Emma asked at last, drowsily, her head snuggled against his chest. "We can't just go back. They're too powerful, they'll kill you, then me, then you again… but we can't just let it. My son, my family… I'm going to fight for them. I just don't know how."

"As it happens, love…" Hook nudged her gently, and they stood up together, suddenly cold, clinging onto each other as they started across the deck toward his cabin. "You remember those beans the bloody giant was planting?"

Emma gaped at him. "Wha – did you?"

He grinned, as close to shyly as Captain Hook ever got. "May have purloined one, love, yes."

"But they're… I mean, can we…"

"The ship's made out of enchanted wood. If the portal opens, we can sail down it."

"But where?" Where could they get the weapons, the resources, the magic that they would need to return and take back Storybrooke together?

He grinned again, wider, and turned her to face the night, the moon on the water, the golden glow on the rigging, the gleam of his hook where it held her gently around the waist. "There's still a place where I have a few friends, lass," he murmured. "Well, make that _one _friend. Pixies being a bunch of temperamental bloody bastards and quite unsurpassed at holding grudges. But when we come back… well, the _rest _of them want to kill me, but she'll listen. She will. And from there, we'll find a way, love. We will." He kissed her ear.

Emma twisted in his arms, trying to get a look at his face, trying to meet his eyes, to see for herself if it was a lie. She couldn't stand a lie, and she also couldn't think where they were going. But then, something else she had said long ago, in another life, came to her. And slowly, at last, she began to smile.

"Like where, Captain?" she breathed. "Neverland?"

"Yes," he whispered back, and bent, once more, to take her mouth with his. The final word was spoken between them, breathed into each other's souls.

"Neverland."


	6. Make Your Choice

**Make Your Choice **for **shaddicted. **Rated **M **for some bad language and suchlike…

**Prompt: **_How about them having just a fleeting moment completely unrelated to Valentine's Day? An accidental brush, a heated glance, maybe even an angry passionate almost kiss (or not almost)? No sadness, might be some anger but definitely passion involved. […] in the car away from Storybrooke._

Not even five miles out of Storybrooke, and Emma already knew that this had been a singularly shitty idea. She'd hesitated in driving the Bug over the town line, fearing that this would somehow cause Hook to lose his memories, and then she'd be carting a chatty motherfucker named Killian Jones the rest of the way to Boston, forced to explain to him both why she was exiling him in the first place and why he had a large, sharp object in place of a left hand. But even though Gold had probably been trying to fix something up as fast as he possibly could in order to cause this very thing to happen, it didn't. There wasn't even a blue ripple of energy. Just a faint thrum, a sensation like static electricity in Emma's fingertips, and they were on their way.

Of course, the downside was that her passenger was _still _a chatty motherfucker, and he retained full knowledge of where to press every single one of her buttons. He had never been in a car before, having developed a natural hostility toward the things after his close encounter of the third kind with Greg Mendel's, and every time she ginned up above 40 mph, he was prone to clutching his seat with his good hand and shooting her black looks as if anticipating her to carry out some kind of nefarious murder plot. The rest of the time, he was trying to touch the dials, blasting them frozen with the air conditioner or roasting them with the heat, twiddling all the stations on the radio and being dissuaded, with great difficulty on her part, from reaching for the gearshift or the windshield-wiper stick.

Then again, Emma knew that at least half his interference, if not all of it, was deliberately pre-meditated. He was furiously angry at her, and this little passive-aggressive act was his way, for now, of showing it. She'd volunteered to drive him since she didn't trust anyone else to actually deliver him to Boston, where he had said he'd stay rather than sailing the _Jolly Roger _back to the ruins of the Enchanted Forest. (And besides, no one else really could leave Storybrooke except Neal, and that was just too horrifying to think of.)

Nonetheless, her patience was far from inexhaustible in the best of times, and with her nerves already so rasped and raw, his dozenth attempt to blast the oldies station was finally enough. "Quit it!" she snapped, powering it off. "I'm doing you a favor, and you don't – "

"Oh yes, love. A _favor, _that's what you call it." The serpentine look he shot back at her, blue eyes half-veiled in sooty lashes, almost caused her to drive off the road. "I was at a loss to think of another word for what a lass does when she unceremoniously bundles a man out of her life, out of her heart, and out of her _bed, _and means to call it a service to him."

Emma flinched at the venom in his voice, even more so because she couldn't rebuff it. "I told you," she said weakly. "This is my only chance to get Henry back. He hasn't talked to me since he found out that I lied to him about… about Baelfire."

It was Hook's turn to flinch at the sound of the name. "So," he said after a moment. "You're going to get back together with the bastard, then? The belly-crawling, miserable, cowardly purulent sack of cock maggots who would be eating and shitting out of the same hole if _you _hadn't interrupted me?"

"I was trying not to get you arrested for assault! It had nothing to do with – "

He leered at her. "Oh, that was it, was it? You stopped me kicking the shite out of the sorry-arse ignoramus for _my own good? _The one who calling a halfwit would be a bloody compliment? Nothing to do with the fact that you're throwing me out of town and fleeing back into his arms? I'm bloody fucking disappointed in you, and I don't think it's out of place to say so, _m'lady."_

Emma's hands jerked on the wheel. "I am not getting back together with Neal," she said tightly. "But he's Gold's son, he's going to be in Storybrooke from now on, and I can't be babysitting you two every moment of the day. Besides, he's Milah's son too. I thought you'd have taken that into consideration before deciding to go beat the crap out of him."

"I didn't know that at the time I conceived my plan, no," Hook conceded stiffly. "I'm not going to kill the arselicker, just for that reason alone. But the man is as much a coward as his bloody father. He's not worthy of you, and every time I see him, my fingers remind me that there are five of them missing that I could more fruitfully have wrapped around his throat. Thanks, again, _to his bloody father."_

"I thought you weren't going to kill him." Emma downshifted around a hairpin curve.

Hook shrugged. "Maybe not. That doesn't exclude choking him until he squeals."

Emma took her eyes off the road, where they had been sedulously trained for the last half hour, to glance sidelong at him. She was troubled at the sheer blackness of the expression on his face, how close he seemed to the unscrupulous pirate captain who would say anything, remove anyone, in his way. Suddenly she wondered at the advisability of turning him loose on unsuspecting Boston, where even his eccentricities wouldn't be camouflaged forever. He'd probably try to hijack the _Constitution _from Navy Yard or something, and get thrown into the federal pokey. The thought that he might have been one of the criminals she had chased down in her old days almost made her want to laugh, but it hurt too much.

He was, as ever, too damned sensitive to her moods. He smirked. "Second thoughts? This is your last chance to have me knock out the sodding bastard for you, love."

"I don't want you to do anything to him," Emma said, even more stiffly than him. "Gold has been looking for him forever, and maybe now that he's found him, he'll tone it down. He's been without him a long time. I'm not happy about it, but I don't have the right to take it from him. I know something about how it feels to be separated from your son."

"If you think it will be that simple, you're bloody dreaming. From what I saw, relations between them weren't chummy to start, and don't make the crocodile into some sort of sainted martyr. He lost his son from his own doing, because _he killed the boy's mother." _With no warning, the pirate slammed his hook into the Bug's dash hard enough to leave a scar. "Because he had to tell himself he wasn't a coward, he made himself into a monster."

Emma tried to disguise how badly that had made her jump, and they drove in silence for some time. "Look," she said at last, pulling off into a roadside service station. "I need to get gas. If you really have to, we'll continue the conversation in a minute. Just sit tight and… just. Just." If she told him not to do anything, it would immediately become his cherished heart's desire.

He leered at her again, but said nothing as she pulled the Bug up next to the pump, got out, and flipped open the cap. The station was so old that she was going to have to pay inside, and she muttered and checked her wallet for cash. She was almost sure she'd put a few twenties in there for the road, but she must not, because she didn't have any. Therefore, she was going to have to put this on her credit card. And between the constant disruptions, trips, heartbreaks, shocks, and battles, she hadn't exactly had time to work and make money recently.

"Whatever," Emma muttered, giving the gas pump a final click to top it off and heading inside. The shop was cramped and woodsy, stocked with a shabby assortment of road maps, off-brand beer, about a thousand varieties of chewing tobacco and cigarettes, and staffed by a proprietor who was a hundred years old at the youngest. Two scruffy logger types were loitering by the magazine rack, ogling the pornos (which, aside from hunting, fishing, and car glossies, were all that was available) and one of them looked up and whistled. "Hey, cutie."

Emma rolled her eyes and strode up to the streaky glass counter, where the proprietor squinted at her like a mole rat. "I need to pay for the gas on pump 1," she informed him. "$39.02?"

He blinked at her as if no one had ever uttered this sentence to him before in his life. "Eh?"

"The. Gas." Emma pulled out her credit card and waved it. "Pay?"

He looked at it, looked at her, then back at it. His mouth worked. "Card reader's down."

"Oh come on. You have to be kidding."

He shook his head stubbornly, chin wattles jiggling like a turkey's. "Cash only."

"You don't have a sign up!" Emma said angrily, as if this was somehow going to alter the situation. "You have an ATM or something?"

"Nope. Vandalized again. Cash only."

"I don't have cash. I only have a card. Take the card."

He looked at it, looked at her, then back at it. His mouth worked. "Can't."

Emma started into an exasperated curse, then jumped when a hand touched her back. She turned to see one of the seedy logger types grinning down at her, with a mouthful of mostly missing yellow teeth. "You having problems, sweetie?"

"No, I'm… fine." She tried to sidle out from under his hand, and turned back to the proprietor. "Look, how about you tell me where the nearest ATM is, and I leave like, my driver's license here and go get cash? Or why don't I – "

"I'll pay for it, sweetie," the logger interrupted. "Get a real man to treat you right, so long as you treat me like a woman should." He grinned again. "You're awful pretty. Where you from?"

"None of your fucking business. And keep your hand off me if you're interested in it staying attached to your body." Emma slapped it away.

"Now that's not real nice of you, is it?" He turned to call to his buddy across the store. "Hey, Ed, was that real nice of her?"

"Nope," said Ed, who was apparently used to being asked questions like these.

The proprietor looked vaguely alarmed, but made no move to intervene. Emma tried to dodge past her unwelcome suitor, but he'd braced both arms on either side of her, pinning her back against the counter. "You gonna drive off with a tank full of stolen gas, sweetie? Come on. Don't be all uppity. I'm a nice guy, I promise. You and that pretty mouth, why don't you – "

Emma looked around for something at hand, conveniently club or flashlight-sized, to drop him with. That was not going to be the best strategy for paying for her gas, true, but she wasn't about to let McCreepy slobber on her a second longer. But there was nothing at hand, and he was leaning in and puckering up as if his delusional ass actually thought he was going to get –

At that moment, the front door of the shop slammed open so hard that the bells fell to the floor in a clang. And from the look of horror on the proprietor's face, Emma knew exactly what he saw.

"Mate," said Killian Jones, in the world's most deathly quiet voice. "Get away from her."

Interrupted, the douchebag glanced around angrily, and he let out a loud guffaw when he saw the pirate in his long black leather jacket and eyeliner. "Fuck off, queer."

"That wasn't a smart thing to say." Hook grinned rakishly, took three steps, and whipped his left arm up, revealing the lethal metal appendage attached to it. "Care to come again?"

Ed's eyes bugged out. "What in the_ hell _is that thing? Steve! He's got a – "

"Oh good," Hook said pleasantly. "One of you still has a clue in your brains, soon to be gone when it dies of loneliness. As the saying goes, I have a hook and I'm not afraid to use it, so unless you want to feel what it's like to be dissected inch by bloody inch, _get away from her."_

Steve, as Emma's attempted inamorato was apparently called, looked even more distempered. "What are you, some kind of fuckin' actor? What's even with that thing stuck on your wrist, who you trying to fool, are you – "

The pirate reached over with his hand, unsnapped the hook, and raised it. "You're right. It's much more convenient for burying between your eyes this way."

The proprietor cleared his throat with a sound like a dying carburetor. "Uh, fellas. I don't want no monkey business in the shop, you hear? Take it outside, take it outside."

"Don't worry. This will be done in just a moment. So, gents. What's it going to be? Hooks, fists, or swords?"

"I don't like this guy," Ed said. "He's nuts."

"He's just some kind of loser, shut up." Realizing, however, that the threat to his safety was going to have to be taken seriously, Steve let go of Emma and advanced on Hook. "I bet he's gonna shriek like a little pussy when I – "

Sadly for human erudition everywhere, that sentence was never completed. The pirate snapped his hook back into the brace and went, snake-quick, for the sword strapped to his hip. It flashed out with a hiss, clearly no kind of toy or joke, glimmering with a razor-sharp edge. "Where are my manners? We haven't been properly introduced."

Steve stopped in his tracks, eyes fixed on the blade. "The fuck is that?"

"Shortly about to be three feet out your arse unless you collect your dismal sidekick there, spare us all your so-called wit, and book it the bloody fuckery out of this shop, never to see her or speak to her again. If you do, I can _promise _you will wish you had never been born."

Steve visibly deflated, inching back from the blade when Hook slashed it under his nose. "I… Jesus Christ, buddy, take it easy, just take it easy, okay? Your girlfriend there was kind of in trouble since she didn't have any money, I was trying to do her a favor, all right? No need to go Zorro on my butt. Just – put that away and… chill the fuck out."

"So soon as you get out of our lives. Go on." Hook placed the tip of the sword delicately against Steve's beard. "Or I shave off that ugly dead rodent. Tuft. By. Tuft."

"Yeah, uh… I'm… yeah. You… have a nice day." Steve backed away, jerked his head at Ed, and beat feet for the door. The next sound was of a truck revving up and tires squealing as they shot away down the road.

Emma stared after them, fighting the urge to pinch herself. "Hoo – Killian," she croaked. "Just put the sword away, okay? It's all right."

He did so, sheathing it with one brief and violent thrust. Then while she was still about to say something, figure out just what she was going to do about the gas, he reached out, seized her by the arm, and almost carried her out the door. He hustled her around the side of the shop into the woods at the back, swung her up against the rear wall, and kissed her so hard that she saw stars.

Emma gave a muffled squawk, trying to push him away, but he wouldn't let go. His body pressed up against her at full length, his mouth hot and wet and bruising, his lips open, their tongues and teeth meeting and tasting and scraping. Finally she had nothing to do but to clutch him back, making out like teenagers at midnight on the porch, holding onto him and knotting her fingers in his hair, a small voice screaming that this was the exact wrong way to tell him not to go, and the rest of her ever more horrifyingly aware that she had never wanted him to. That she may not have let him get out of the car in Boston, that it was doubtful he even would have, and –

She finally had to stop it when he began to try to get his hand under her shirt. She trapped it with hers, feeling his fingers burning against the bare skin of her side. "No… in public, not going…"

"Then you'd better find us somewhere private, love," he growled, the deep timbre of his voice sending shockwaves through her stomach. "Because you're not about to make me stop now."

"Yes… I am." She pushed his face away when he leaned back in. "I still have a tank of gas that I have to figure out some damn way to pay for, and – "

She stopped at the shit-eating smirk on his face. Still keeping his left arm against her stomach, he reached into his breast pocket with his good hand and twiddled her missing twenties at her. "Looking for these?"

Emma made a grab for them, and missed as he jerked them away. "You son of a _bitch!"_

"Pirate, love," he reminded her, tucking them back into his pocket and patting them. "So, you have a choice. Go back in there and try to get the geezer to accept that magical money card of yours, or let me pay for it, get back in the bloody automobile, and drive me home with you."

"You're despicable."

He quirked a dark eyebrow at her. "And you, my darling, have no money. Make your choice."

Emma hesitated, aware of what she was going to commit herself to if she said yes. Take him, and everything which that entailed. The confrontations with Gold, the possibility of Henry staying away from her for months, even years… more fights with Neal, more drama, never a quiet moment in Storybrooke again… even her own parents hadn't been sad to think they were seeing the last of the pirate. Snow had tolerated him, but her father would have personally driven Hook to Boston even at the cost of his own memory, if Emma hadn't put her foot down. But Killian's eyes locked on hers, her legs weak…

"I told you, love," he said, utterly seriously. "I will always follow you. And I will _always _fight for you, even if it's just two idiots such as previous company. You knew it, too. Knew you had to tie me down and chain me up and stab me in the back and break my heart and try everything you possibly could, but you'll still never be rid of me. I bloody _need _you, Emma Swan. Need you like bloody _air_, and I _will _cut down _anyone _who tries to take you from me."

The look he gave her made her shiver again. "Hook…"

"Emma," he breathed, closing in on her again. "We could, you know. Right here. That old bastard must be a hundred at least, he's not hobbling out to interrupt us." His hand was sliding up her shirt again, his hook firmly anchored in her belt loops. "Come to me, darling. I beg you."

"Not _here. _Seriously. I'm not getting splinters in my back – or anywhere," she added, as dignifiedly as one possibly could in this situation. "All… all right. Give me my money back, I'll go in and pay for the gas before Grandpa calls the cops, and we can find.. . somewhere else."

His face split in a dazzling, heart-stopping smile. "Was that a promise?"

"More like a threat, buddy boy." Emma thrust her hips against his, causing him to emit an audible gasp, and seductively stroked his cheek, while darting her other hand into his pocket and seizing the twenties before he could get his hook dislodged. "Two can play at this game."

"Oh," he purred. "I would _despair _if you didn't, darling."

"I hate you." Emma reached down and unhooked herself. "Go wait in the car."

He gave her another one of those X-rated looks, then slowly sauntered away, around the corner, just as the proprietor apparently stepped out to shout for them (no doubt having only just then noticed that they were gone). Emma sighed and hurried to settle the bill, shoving two twenties into his arthritic claw and telling him to keep the change. Then she hotfooted it across the asphalt and dove into the Bug, just in case Hook took it in mind to start stripping in the passenger seat.

She didn't look at him as she buckled up, reversed out, and pulled out onto the road. There wasn't anyone coming, probably wasn't anyone else on it for forty miles (Ed and Steve were no doubt frantically increasing that distance). She could feel Hook looking at her, looking at her as if he could never stop, and finally, shyly, she looked back at him.

He reached out to slowly, gently stroke her tousled hair out of her face. "Well, love?" he whispered. "Where are we going? Home?"

For the longest moment, she hesitated. Then she reached up, and covered her hand with his.

"Yes," she whispered. "Home."


	7. Black Leather

**Black Leather, **for **missrivets. **Rated **NC-17 **and is definitely not safe for children. Or any of us, really.

**Prompt: **_Can I have a valentine fic? Pretty please with Killian on top? Or on bottom? How about on his ship? Do want to see that scene! *grabby hands*_

_(subsequent requests for leather were… honored :D)_

"Look," Emma said, for something like the fiftieth time. "It's not what you think it is. Of course I need to talk to him, he's the only one that knows the Which Witch's evil secrets. And with the way the wind is blowing… I feel like we could use a little of that."

Her parents exchanged identical dubious looks, the kind that would make you think they had never been cursed and oblivious for twenty-eight years, and had just gone right on being an old married couple throughout. Finally, her mother took the bull by the horns. "We appreciate you volunteering, Emma, but honestly, we've spent a _lot _of time over the last few days questioning Hook. Don't you think that if he was going to tell us anything, he would have?"

"No," Emma said honestly, eyeing her father. "Not with you glaring at him the whole time. You two are just too alpha-male for your own good. If you're there, he's just going to be throwing out dirty comments about Mary Margaret and snarking at you and otherwise distracting us all. He just can't help himself, and honestly, you haven't given him any reason to want to trust you or help you. He's a mercenary. He's not going to help us unless there's something in it for him."

"_Me _not give _him – _" David Nolan, to judge from the look on his face, was utterly incensed that suggestion was even felt to be necessary. He was prevented from whatever further impolitic remarks he was about to make by his wife, who laid a hand on his arm. His face remained the approximate tenor of a stormcloud, but he finally grumbled, "So what does this entail, exactly?"

"I… don't know." Emma hadn't really known much since her return from Manhattan. She still felt torn up, inside and out, flung out a window, and certainly with no desire to play by the rules anymore. Her ex-boyfriend and the father of her child was _Rumplestiltskin's son_, like that wasn't a coincidence. Rumple – Gold – had set her up to be the trick clause in the curse, he'd tried to control her entire life, and _now _there was some kind of conspiracy going on that probably involved Henry, descendant of the Dark One that he was; indeed, by blood or adoption, the kid was related to just about every power-hungry villain imaginable. Emma was furious, betrayed, and out for a little vengeance of her own, and for that, it couldn't hurt (much) if she had a quick chat with the acknowledged maestro of it. She wasn't _quite _going to let him kill Gold… but she understood him the whole fuck of a lot better than she had before she left.

"So you're just going to, what? Ask him politely?"

"No," Emma said bluntly. "That's not going to work, and it's not what he's going to respond to."

David's mouth sagged open. "Tell me you're not."

"I'm… not, all right?" She didn't know if that was a lie, though in her gut it leaned uncomfortably toward being one. "All I have to do is flirt with him. He's on his ship, we know that. And you told me you were on it, remember? So what are we going to do – wait for Cora and Regina to put some plan together against us, or let me go ask him?"

David continued to look deeply unhappy.

"I'm a grown woman, you know," Emma added tartly. "I _did _date guys – totally unsuccessfully, but whatever – long before you knew to worry about it. I can take care of myself."

"She's right, you know," Mary Margaret said softly to her husband. "We have to let her."

David sighed. "All right, but… be back by midnight?"

"A curfew? Seriously? What am I, sixteen?"

"No, I just…" Her father sighed again, deeper. "I'm agreeing to send you off, alone, to talk to a pirate who we all agree is no friend to anyone here. I just want to know that you're all right."

Emma's heart softened, and she reached out to briefly clasp his hand. "All right," she said. "Midnight. That should probably be enough time."

"For questioning?" David looked at her oddly. "I certainly hope so."

—

The moon was rising over the harbor, painting the dark streets of Storybrooke in hues of bone and porcelain, as Emma pulled into the marina parking lot, set the brake, and spent several seconds taking slow, steadying breaths. From here, the small New England town looked postcard-perfect, almost like you wouldn't guess that a pair of crazy sorceresses, one crazy sorcerer, and one crazy pirate were conspiring among themselves to keep it in permanent turmoil. Emma had already heard that Anton the giant, her semi-friend from the beanstalk, had gotten loose and caused chaos, but he'd settled down peaceably enough with the dwarves. She'd have to pay him a visit sometime… sometime later.

The wind caught the Bug door as she opened it, shivering for a reason not entirely due to the cold. She told herself to act like this was any other business engagement, but she already knew it wasn't. The sheriff generally didn't take time to wash and style her hair, then put on a low-cut blouse, jewelry, and lipstick before going to interrogate a perp. David's face on beholding her efforts had been most amusing, but Mary Margaret only shook her head and admitted that it would do. At least she hadn't tried to press condoms into Emma's hand and tell her to be safe, just to make mortification-by-parents complete. _Besides, what would I need condoms for?_

Her imagination was all too eager to supply answers. Shaking it out of her head, Emma advanced down the pier, glanced up, and noticed the seabirds roosting on what looked like thin air. A rueful smile cracked her lips; that seemed like a shoddy bit of spellwork to her, not that she knew a great deal about it. But it confirmed that she was in the right place, and raising her foot gingerly, she put it out over the dark water, thinking that if she'd somehow misjudged this, she was shortly about to be very cold and wet and all that grooming would be a crapshoot anyway.

She hadn't. Her foot met something invisible and solid, and she started up, passing through something that felt thick and treacly. A moment later, she was stepping out onto the deck of a quiet, dark, but very real and very present pirate ship.

Emma glanced around with wide eyes, wondering if Hook had strung up some kind of booby trap, or if he (understandably) considered invisibility to be enough of a defense against meddlers. She edged forward step by step, froze dead when the deck creaked incriminatingly under her feet, and waited for the cabin door to crash open and him to come swirling out in full leather and pathos. But while there was a faint glow in the stern windows, it remained undisturbed.

Right. She was doing this. Emma took another breath, forced down the rioting butterflies in her stomach, then strode across the deck. Reaching the cabin door, she raised her fist and banged briskly on it, just barely resisting the urge to yell, "It's the police, and we know you're in there!"

For a moment more, still silence. Then she heard footsteps coming closer, and clenched her fists so hard that her fingernails left half-moons in her palm, steeling herself to look into his eyes again. Just as she thought she was ready, the door opened, and she realized that she wasn't.

They stared at each other for the most excruciatingly awkward thirty seconds of Emma Swan's life, and considering some of the seconds she'd previously endured (Manhattan topping the list) that was saying a lot. Then he grinned at her, no, _smiled, _actually smiled, warm and open and flirtatiously, as if he was happy, truly happy, for the first time since he'd last seen her. "My darling. To what do I owe this bounteous and most unexpected pleasure?"

She debated whether to tell him straight out that she'd come for information, and decided against it. That, after all, was the strategy she'd trashed to David. "No reason," she said flippantly. "Just needed to check up on you. I seem to recall I left you chained to a bed in the hospital, and I didn't want to underestimate your talent for mischief. That was all." She turned as if to leave.

"Are you?" He caught her wrist. "You haven't even given me my hook back."

"It may or may not be in my bag." Emma smiled sweetly at him. "Interested?"

"Ravening warthogs couldn't keep me away." He was, as always, far closer than personal space tended to call for, and he lightly lifted her hand to his lips. "You're just in time for supper."

Emma, reminding herself that this was all part of the plan, followed him inside and allowed him to shut the door behind her. Indeed, he did appear to have been eating something, only by virtue of the fact that a plate of food was balanced precariously on the chaos of charts, quills, sextants, candle stubs, weapons, something that looked suspiciously like a pot of eyeliner, and other such pirate miscellanea cluttering the ornate claw-footed mahogany table. A flask of something that had to be rum accompanied it, and she raised an eyebrow. "You're a real gourmet."

"Ah, love, I'm a simple man at heart. All I want are the good things in life. A square meal, a strong drink, a warm bed, and a beautiful woman to share it with."

She smirked at him. "You know, I get the feeling you have a great imagination."

"You have _no _idea." He gave her a look that could only be described as sex incarnate, and she had to prevent her knees from giving out on the spot. "Abundant, long-lasting, sure not to disappoint, large and ready. Which, incidentally, could be said for other aspects of me as well."

"Well then." Emma sat down in his chair, casually spreading her legs. She didn't even need to check where his eyes darted; she could feel it like a physical presence on her skin. "What if I told you it was your lucky day?"

"Oh?" he murmured. "That's a very intriguing offer, darling. Especially coming from you. Does it involve handcuffs and stabbing me in the back to boot?"

"The handcuffs if you're interested." Emma was sure he had a pair around here. "Silk scarves in a pinch. But it comes with a price."

His eyes were still fixed on her cleavage. "Of course it does."

"Are you going to ask?"

"Aren't you going to tell me?"

There was far too much heat in her face, her stomach, her chest. Maybe she should have picked up some condoms after all (no she had not just thought that). "Are you this obnoxious with everyone, or is it just something about me?"

"Of course it's about you, darling." He let his eyes perform a slow, lascivious flick from her face, to her chest, and then to regions nether. "Do you think I waste this much wit and charm and stupendously effective come-hither looks on everyone?"

"Kind of wondered, actually," Emma shot back. "That seems to be your M.O."

"My what now?"

"You know." She got up from the chair and sauntered toward him. "Your mode of operation. The way you like to get all up in everyone's faces…" She let him get a good look, then moved closer. "You know…. like this."

His hand hovered at the small of her back, his fingers ghosting along her sheer silken blouse, close enough for her to feel the heat. "You know, love," he breathed, "if I didn't know better, I'd think you were trying to seduce me. But surely I must be mistaken. You'd never do that. Cantankerous, unsociable termagant like you."

"What did you just call – _hey!"_

He smirked. "Am I mistaken, then?"

Emma's blood was about a hundred degrees too hot for her veins. She hesitated a moment longer, then acted as if she was about to turn away, just to make him sweat it. Then she leaned in, whispered, "No," and kissed him.

He responded instantaneously. It was as if a live wire had fallen and struck both of them, electrifying them in unison; she had never felt anything like it _ever, _and as the saying went, she had kissed a lot of frogs. Usually either some guy she'd met at a bar trying to blow off steam, or one of her distant colleagues in the Boston criminal justice system; she wasn't about to commit "office incest," and didn't want the rumor going around that she'd slept her way up the chain. She certainly wasn't above honey-trapping a mark on occasion, as she'd been doing on her fateful twenty-eighth birthday right before Henry arrived, but she never let things get this far. She did what she had done with that toolbag: get in, put him off his guard, and deck him.

Right now, however, Emma did not care about any other man she had ever even laid eyes on in her life. She was more interested in making the fuck out with the one she had her arms tangled around. No matter the voice in her head telling her that she should do this more professionally (hah, like seducing the guy to get information out of him was a noble calling) or that between the pirate thing and the three-hundred-years-old thing, he could give Hugh Hefner a run for his money in the number of women he'd bedded. He probably did this to all of them, too.

Yet it still didn't matter. He was here, he was with her, and he very definitely, beyond all dispute, wanted her very badly. He was already making motions as if to relocate them to the bed, as if he was done being smoothly and poisonously glib and just wanted to have her and have her hard, before she could change her mind. But as they were crashing down onto the covers together, she tore herself away from his whiskey mouth long enough to breathe, "Remember what I said earlier? About handcuffs?"

There was nothing visible in his eyes but animal lust. "Oh? So you want to try it that way? Didn't get enough in the giant's lair? You've a bargain, on one condition."

"Oh?"

"Hook." He leaned up and licked the pulse point in her throat. "Please."

"Oh, you mean _your_ hook? It's back in my bag. I'd have to get up and go over there." She pointed. "So in other words, I'd have to – "

"Change of plans, then." He pulled her back down. "It can wait."

She shrugged. He looped his arm back around her, and their kissing at this point began to get rather frenzied and indiscriminate. Deep wet sounds, gasps, grinding and pulling and melting on each other; tongues became involved, as well as biting. Then at last he leaned back, let go of her with a smile that was pure sadism, and rolled off the bed, panting, clothing badly askew. He made a short venture across the room, opened a box, and removed a fistful of silk scarves, which he wagged at her. "Unless you want the handcuffs?"

"Either one. I'm not the one who's going to be tied up. You're the one who's kinky."

"Kinky?" He appeared absolutely delighted by this. "Is that what they call it when the woman likes to go on top?"

"No. They call that cowgirl." Emma crooked a finger at him. "Come here and I'll show you."

Indeed, the ravening warthogs would have stood no chance, the speed at which he got back to the bed. She reached for the scarves and then for him, but he had no intention of submitting meekly – "a woman unwilling to fight for what she wants deserves what she gets" – and she had to wrestle him down in order to knot the scarves around his right wrist, which she finally got tied around the carved headboard. Then there was the ordeal of trying to do the other one; it was even harder because he had, of course, no left hand, so it kept slipping off the stump. The only compromise was to get him on his back, straddle him and pin him down hard with her hips, and start working him over with her mouth, thus to discourage him from continuing to struggle.

He moaned, eyes hooded with desire, as she set to work on the lacings of his trousers – Catwoman wished she looked this good in skintight black leather – and slipped her hand inside. It was even more tantalizing when she couldn't entirely see what she was doing, stroking his cock gently with her fingers, refusing to allow him the satisfaction of complete freedom from what was indisputably an even more agonizingly tight fit. Keeping her eyes on his, she finally drew him out and peeled his trousers down off his lean, muscled thighs. The expression on his face made her smirk. "Take it easy."

"Whatever… you say, darling. I wasn't going – _ohgods –" _he wheezed, as she wrapped her hand back around him. She made a slow and careful job of it, until he was trembling so hard that he would have actually levitated off the bed if he hadn't been tied to it, and then let go, stood above him to give him the best view, and shucked her own damp panties. She dropped back to her straddle, knees braced on either side of his hips, then spread herself with her fingers. She used her other hand to situate him, and then took him inside her at one thrust, all the way to the hilt.

Hook made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a scream, sounding not unlike a ravening warthog himself, and almost tore the bed in half trying to get his hand loose to touch her and grasp her hip for a better angle. But while he might be the pirate here, she was no mean hand with knots either, and the scarves held. Veins stood out in his forehead as he gasped. "Changed… my mind. Don't like… this _cowgirl _of yours… after – _OHGODS."_

"You… are a… _big liar." _Emma rolled her hips over his, feeling her body open up for him, experimenting with just how deep she could get him to go. "A _very big _liar."

His eyes were rolled back into his head, but his lips still managed to twist into a leer. "Well… at least I didn't lie about… that part."

"Uh-uh," she moaned back, experimenting with tightening him around him and releasing, long slow strokes. She reached over and loosened the scarves around his right wrist, then guided his hand down between them to touch her, to press his thumb against her sensitive nub, keeping time with their languid strokes. The bed creaked underneath them in deep, steady time.

As close to the edge as she'd already taken him, it wasn't long until he was going over. He shuddered madly, fingers digging hard into her clit, as he wrenched and gasped and completely lost it, something which she found quite satisfying to witness and not just for the obvious reasons. But she had only a moment in which to do so before he was dragging her into the abyss with him, and they were both reduced to a quivering, sweaty heap, desperately entangled, motionless except for their gasping. Then she braced her heels and slid him out of her.

It was only then that she remembered what she'd come to do in the first place. Somehow it had completely gone. Yet if she asked _now…_

_There's still time, _she reminded herself. Even though she wasn't sure just how long it had been since she'd arrived; time vanished with him, stood still, and simultaneously slipped by too fast. Maybe in a post-coital snuggle, he wouldn't be quite as on his guard. That was assuming they'd snuggle at all. At the moment, she was almost feeling – after giving him due time to recover, of course – like she might not mind another go. It had been so long since she'd had sex with a guy even twice; twenty-four hours was at the outer limit of the time she could stand to be intimate with someone. But now, with him… it felt oddly, terrifyingly, like she was just getting started. Like there were so many more nights to have. So many more mornings to wake.

After a moment, instead of tormenting him further (she seemed to recall that little fact of broken ribs, although they clearly hadn't been paining him much; she would be astounded if he could feel anything besides euphoria, delirium, and endorphins right now) she slid off and crawled up next to him, pulling the sweaty quilt out from where it had been twisted underneath them and tossing it lightly over their naked legs. She slid a finger through the dark hair on his chest, circling his navel, drawing it back up over the muscles, the scars. Then she cupped his cheek, pulled his face in, and kissed him again.

"Love," he groaned. "Bloody hell. Stay with me tonight."

Emma hesitated, once more remembering her midnight deadline. He didn't have a clock in his cabin, which she considered a serious oversight for Captain Hook, but it couldn't be that late, right? Besides, she felt fulfilled (in more ways than one) she felt _whole, _and no matter the fact of who it was with, she wasn't ready to give that up just yet. Not after Manhattan and what it had done to her. Not after all the lies. She needed this. She needed truth.

Strange that she thought she was going to find that in a three-hundred-year-old pirate with vengeance on the brain, but no matter. She reached up and untied his left arm so he could wrap both of them around her, and they snuggled up under the quilts (he had a marvelous featherbed) and began to make themselves most comfortable indeed, necking and fooling around and fumbling each other, as open and carefree as either of these fiercely guarded, solitary people had been in an age. Emma kept reminding herself that sometime before she left, she _had _to ask him about Cora and Regina's plans… if he even knew anything about them… if _she _were the Which Witch, she wouldn't have told Hook a damn thing, being well aware of how prone he was to spilling other people's secrets at inconvenient moments (for them, not him). In which case, she might not have even needed to come here at all, but she was doing a useful service and…

Hook, having been tied up, now finally had use of his hand (and stump) and was busily returning the manifold favors she had bestowed on him. He got her gauzy blouse the rest of the way off her (it had been hanging off her shoulders already) and began to kiss her breasts, rolling her over underneath him and pinning her wrists above her head. She gasped and bucked back against him, grinding them in rasping deep friction, skin against skin and he was almost inside her again but not quite, her hands reaching for him and –

_"What the hell is going on?"_

One second, Emma's brain was still agreeably fried with pheromones and lust. The next, it was shrinking back, screeching like a banshee, and scrambling to clutch the covers over herself as her – _oh God Jesus Christ what the fuck no – _her _father _stepped into the cabin, sword holstered at one hip and gun at the other. He stopped short and stared at them; she could almost hear the circuits burning as he was forced to face up to the fact that he was actually seeing his daughter naked in bed with Captain Hook, and there was indeed only one thing that could have been going on. She was surprised there wasn't electrical smoke gusting out his ears.

Hook, for his part, remained calm. "Your Highness," he said, with amiable, knife-edged malice. "There _was _a door, but that apparently doesn't concern you like the rest of us mortals."

David ignored him. "Emma… it's almost twelve-thirty… we agreed that if you weren't back by then, I'd . ."

Emma clutched the quilts harder, having a horrible memory of the time she had walked in on her parents _in flagrante. _Karma was a bitch, apparently. "I thought it was earlier," she squeaked.

"Is this a bad time to remark that the family motto _is _'I will always find you?' " Hook drawled, causing both father and daughter to glare daggers at him. "But honestly, Your Highness, I'm impressed. I didn't think you were the sort of man who facilitated your daughter's love affairs."

David looked as if he was _thisclose _to lunging across the room, dragging the pirate out of bed, and introducing Hook's cranium intimately to his own posterior, but that would have required him to pull off the quilts and see both of them in the altogether, and he clearly was not ready to do so. Instead, his eyes skated from floor, to ceiling, to window, to anywhere except the bed. "All right," he informed the lantern. "I… will be waiting. At home. With your mother."

Hook made a rude noise, causing David to give him a look that could have been booked for homicide, then swing around on his heel. Back as straight as a ramrod, he exited, shutting the cabin door with a snick behind him.

"Well, love," the pirate remarked. "That was bloody awkward. Nearly enough to make me suspect that dear old daddy didn't quite know what you were up to tonight, did he?"

Emma shuddered. For obvious reasons, her ardor was somewhat dampened. "He… yeah, he might have been aware that I was here," she said lamely, suddenly desperate not to let him on to why she'd actually come. Whatever had happened between them tonight… it wasn't just about strategy or the next move, and she'd known that from the start.

"And yet he let you come, _and _didn't come in guns blazing?" Hook's voice had gotten lower, almost a growl, not quite as playful. "Smells, I'm afraid, just that bit… fishy."

"Look… I know that you and David… you just…" Emma faltered at the thunderous look on his face. "I just… I can…"

"Explain again, no doubt." And with that, he rolled over onto her, pinning her flat beneath him. "He said he would be waiting. I intend to keep him waiting for a _bloody long time."_

Emma squealed in surprise, but Hook was already kissing her again, his mouth devouring hers, hard and hot and insistent, as he pulled her arms back up and slipped her wrists through the silk scarves still dangling from the bedpost; all he had to do was slide the knots tight, which he did with the care of an artisan. "You're not going to be the one tied up, eh, love?" he breathed, kissing her nose and cheeks and eyes and lips, her hair, her jaw, her throat, every inch of her that he could possibly search out and taste and feel. "Well, I'm – afraid – you're – bloody – _wrong."_

Emma started to protest, started to argue. But then he put his hand on her stomach, put his mouth between her legs, and she forgot entirely.


End file.
